|
EDGE AWARD |
Category: International Designer
Exhibitor: Electrolux Appliances EMEA NV
Design: Park Associati Srl, Milan, 39-2798-452,
www.parkassociati.com; Studio FM Milano Srl, Milan, 39-2-8965-6230-31, www.studiofmmilano.it; Absolute Blue sa, Petange, Luxembourg, 352-26-37-57-74, www.absoluteblue.eu
Fabrication: ASP Blue Square NV, Waver, Belgium, 32-10-43-01-00, www.aspbluesquare.com
Show: Salone Internazionale del Mobile, 2010
Budget: $1.1 million
Size: 141-by-62 feet
Cost/Square Foot: $126 |
|
od paints in many colors, but He never paints so gorgeously as when He paints in white," wrote G.K. Chesterton. With that in mind, Electrolux Appliances EMEA NV chose to shade its exhibit in the hues of moonlight and frost, and its pale palette won this year's EDGE Award for Exhibit Design and Graphics Excellence.
Electrolux wanted the exhibit to extend its marketing campaign, where its products are set in white boxes. So the design team - Park Associati Srl, Studio FM Milano Srl, and Absolute Blue sa - conceived a cross between a Cubist temple and a moon-white heaven. The resulting exhibit was an avalanche of white that riffed on Electrolux's marketing campaign.
Three enclosures (made of a semitransparent white fabric and running up to 850-square-feet in size) housed 47 different appliances. Fluorescent lighting that changed throughout the day made the boxes appear to pulse and throb. When the light was at its brightest, taglines such as "Taste Bud Journey" appeared on the fabric.
Other phrases, including "Your Time to Shine" and "Tools for Self-Expression" were laser-cut from black Plexiglas. These slogans hung above the rooms' entrances, and were suspended with wires so thin they seemed to deny physics, casting no shadow on the walls below. "They achieved a truly genius effect with the lighting and shadows," said one Exhibit Design Awards judge.
While chefs cooked for guests in a piazza between the box-like rooms, the booth's real appeal was its achromatic aesthetic and stark geometry that blended perfectly with Electrolux's line of elegantly understated products.e
|