BEST OF 25
	Category: Best of 25 Years Exhibitor: Ueberholz GmbH Design/Fabrication: Ueberholz GmbH, Wuppertal, Germany, 49-202-280-96-0, www.ueberholz.de Show: EuroShop, 2008 Budget: $84,000 Size: 20-by-23 feet Cost/Square Foot: $183

rade shows don't usually offer the kind of environments in which you're tempted to plop down on the floor, sit cross legged, and start meditating. But according to judges, that's exactly the kind of space created by and for Ueberholz GmbH, a Wuppertal, Germany-based exhibit house. The booth's white scrim and colossal stone columns - each of which emitted a different tone when struck with a mallet - gave birth to an experience judges called "the perfect combination of hard and soft, of stunning aesthetics and earthly authenticity."

Debuting at EuroShop 2008, the Ueberholz exhibit took home one of three awards in the Best of 25 Years category, open to any exhibit created within the last 25 years. Drafted out of the firm's desire to communicate with attendees in an utterly unexpected fashion, the booth featured six monolithic sandstone columns.

Two columns toward the back of the 20-by-23-foot space stood 16.5 feet tall and weighed in at a scale-busting 2 tons apiece. Meanwhile, the four comparably "small" columns at the front of the space weighed 1 ton each and rose to 6.5 feet.

Designers dissected each column with a single cut, running through roughly 80 percent of its length. Additional gashes in the stones acted as tuning slots, which designers carefully etched so each stone would emit a distinctly unique tone.

Captivated by the soaring sandstone, visitors chose a mallet from atop the white, waist-high walls positioned on two sides of the booth. They then set about crafting their own musical creations as they explored the tonal emissions from each stone - and the variations within each one.

The perfect combination of traditional exhibitry with oh-so-unexpected stone columns worked in unison to create both a show-stopping exhibit for Ueberholz and an om-inducing experience for attendees.e