Get Smart

design awards

	SILVER AWARD
	Category: International Designer Exhibitor: Daimler AG Design: BraunWagner, Aachen, Germany, 49-241-40-10-72-0, www.braunwagner.de Fabrication: Klartext GmbH, Willich, Germany, 49-2154-88-63-0, www.klartextgmbh.de Show: Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung, 2009 Budget: $1.7 million Size: 148-by-56 feet (11,713 total square feet, including an off-floor lounge) Cost/Square Foot: $145

o help brake the perception that its Smart car is simply eco-bling for tree-huggers, Daimler AG enlisted exhibit house BraunWagner to design its booth for the 2009 Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung show. The resulting exhibit drew inspiration from the congestion of downtown and the look of uptown chic.

Drawn by a Smart car suspended horizontally on a wall near the main reception desk, attendees cruising into the 8,288-square-foot booth found themselves in a scene more hipster than hippie. Where Daimler had previously marketed the Smart's Green virtues, here the company promoted it with a stylized street atmosphere: high-gloss wall panels and a pitch-dark ceiling, along with a rubber granulate floor whose rough surface mimicked an asphalt street.

Designing the booth so visitors would stroll through it like a busy metropolitan sidewalk, Daimler also parked 14 of the Smart Fortwo models on "Smart lanes" of white laminate.

To demonstrate the Fortwo's convenience, Daimler stationed one in a parking space framed by two cyan lines. The lines were marked with the varying lengths of competitors, such as the Mini Cooper, which suggested how much longer they were than the diminutive Fortwo.

Attendees could follow one of the Smart lanes to an off-floor lounge-like space dubbed "Smart club Visionaire 2010," located outside the show hall. A joint effort between Daimler and art publication, Visionaire, the lounge offered refreshments and an electronic version of the magazine.

By placing the Smart car in an uber slick and citified context, Daimler transformed it from ecological necessity to urban accessory. In the words of one judge, "This was an exhibit filled with smarts." E

Charles Pappas, senior writer; cpappas@exhibitormagazine.com

Driver's Ed

In a booth the judges hailed for "its wonderful sense of congestion," the designers repositioned the Smart car from a countercultural conveyance to an upscale but urban auto, using asphalt-like flooring, pearl-white "streets," walls as dark as the proverbial little black dress, and cars jammed together like rush-hour traffic creeping through downtown Los Angeles.