design awards |
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SILVER AWARD |
Category: Double Deck — $150 per Square Foot or More
Exhibitor: Tag Heuer SA
Design: Ottavio Di Blasi &
Partners, Milan, Italy,
39-02-331-1595, www.odb.it
Fabrication: Gruppo Bodino spa, Milan, Italy, 39-02-303-5161, www.gruppobodino.it
Show: BaselWorld, 2007
Budget: $6 million
Size: 89-by-43 feet (11,300 square feet, including upper levels)
Cost/Square Foot: $531
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 or 149 years, Tag Heuer SA has lived up to its motto, “Swiss Avant-Garde Since 1860.” For example, the La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland-based luxury-timepiece maker became the first Swiss watch in space when astronaut John Glenn took one around the world in 1962. So when the company tasked Ottavio Di Blasi & Partners (ODB) to design its booth for the BaselWorld 2007 watch and jewelry show, the Milan architects were determined to create an exhibit that was equally out of this world. “We were influenced by Einstein’s philosophical concept of non-Euclidean geometry,” said Ottavio Di Blasi, the firm’s founder.
Indeed, what attendees encountered when they stepped into Tag Heuer’s space was as far apart from other booths as an atomic clock is a sundial: A black metal iceberg, whose massive, three-story bulk loomed menacingly over them. Soaring almost 40 feet above the floor, the exhibit’s jagged 47-ton steel frame was covered with an 8-ton reflective “skin” of aluminum triangles. If the outside was intimidating, the inside of the booth was intimate. “The contrast was so sharp,” said one Exhibit Design Awards judge, “that the exterior shell and interior compartments felt like two separate worlds.” In the first-floor lounge, booth visitors relaxed on pearl- and sand-shaded leather sofas under recessed lighting and earth-tone colors. When customers left the lounge, they ascended a mahogany-and-aluminum staircase leading to 34 sales offices and conference rooms on the upper two levels.
ODB’s exotic architecture attracted potential customers like a trade show tractor beam. In total, Tag Heuer held 4,000 meetings in the booth, about 30 percent more than the previous year. With out-of-this-world results like that, even Einstein would be impressed.e
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E.T. Exterior
Cut by lasers and designed with software used for automobile engineering, 560 aluminum triangles were laid over a membrane of a PVC-based material called Barisol to form the exhibit’s exterior. Backlit by almost 1,000 fluorescent lights, the booth looked like a glossy onyx tower polished by inhuman hands.
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23rd ANNUAL DESIGN AWARDS: THE WINNERS
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