Client: Brooks Sports Inc., Seattle Design/Fabrication: Pinnacle Exhibits Inc., Hillsboro, OR Size: 50-by-50 feet (2,500 square feet) Estimated Cost: $375,000 Estimated Cost/Square Foot: $150

unners are a strange breed. Who else would consider trekking 10 miles before the sun rises fun, or find sheer joy in an activity that is commonly classified as punishment? But Brooks Sports Inc. understands what makes runners roll out of bed at an ungodly hour to get a few miles in, and its 50-by-50-foot exhibit at the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market reflected the traits that make this subset of athletes so unique. Brooks tasked Portland, OR-based Pinnacle Exhibits Inc. with crafting a space that was imbued with the ethos of the company's "Run Happy" tagline, and that would illustrate its focus on runners.

Attendees entered the space at one corner, passing by a display of running shoes and a monitor chronicling Brooks' social-media efforts before arriving at the heart of the exhibit: a 13-by-26-foot meeting space. There, six counters fostered informal conversations. Rendezvous points were delineated by mesh walls, which had numbers woven into their fabric using shoelace scraps.

Throughout the booth, shoes were displayed on cake platters, benches resembled the soles of running shoes, and stools in the meeting spaces looked like runners' legs. The novelty continued overhead, where 14 life-sized mechanized mannequins seemed to race around the exhibit's perimeter. But the space wasn't just fantastical; it was also sustainable. Brooks has a long-standing environmental policy, dubbed "Running Responsibly," and as such, the exhibit was designed to be reusable. By converting the conference room into a stockroom and transforming the casual meeting space at the front of the exhibit into a veritable shoe store, the structure could be used to peddle products at consumer-oriented race expos.

The exhibit may have been geared toward runners' special microcosm, but it was ultimately a space where worlds collided: pain and pleasure, fantasy and reality, business and sport. And that comingling created a charming ending for Brooks that left the company and its booth visitors running happily ever after.