talian designer Andrea Cerquiglini has a love of exhibits — and a lust for light. “Exhibits are my life,” he said. “And the best exhibits have three key components: architecture, graphics, and light — a lot of light.”

In fact, before Cerquiglini and his wife Laura Rossi opened their firm, Cerquiglini & Rossi Corporate Architecture, he worked in the marketing department of lighting giant Osram spa. It was his lust for light, then, that prompted Osram to hire the pair to design its new exhibit.

Not surprisingly, the exhibit’s design didn’t use light as an enhancement. Rather, as Cerquiglini said, “The exhibit was emotion with light. Light drove almost every aspect of the design, and all materials were chosen for their ability to interact with and reflect light.”

Challenged to display four different product lines while communicating the message “passion for intelligent light solutions,” Cerquiglini & Rossi used four partially enclosed boxes as the exhibit’s focal point. Suggesting four environments — a clothing store, office, home, and jewelry store — the boxes displayed Osram’s four product lines; however, they were more whimsical theatrical sets than product vignettes. While colorful men’s shirts appeared to pop from the walls in the clothing-store box, the jewelry-shop box featured metallic protrusions, creating a space Cerquiglini likened to Superman’s home, Krypton.

Near the back of the space, a hospitality bar offered yup, you guessed it, more light — in the flooring, the bar, and multiple custom-designed light sticks, which also appeared throughout the exhibit and further unified the space.

While the seemingly random exhibit allowed a free flow of traffic and ideas, judges applauded its organization. So grazie and un carissimo saluto, Laura and Andrea, for a virtuoso design born of a lust for light — and a bright idea.e