This lighting exhibition stand for VICE was designed so that the client’s own fixtures light the whole room.
Client VICE, lighting design and manufacture, Beirut · Show Light + Building 2022, Messe Frankfurt · Dates 2–6 October 2022 · Area 54 m², 9 m frontage · Sector Architectural lighting
A lighting exhibition stand is a product demonstration
Light + Building is the world’s leading fair for lighting and building-services technology. In 2022 it ran in October instead of its usual spring slot, and the lighting halls were full of companies with one thing to prove. Every exhibitor there is selling light, so every stand is judged by how it is lit. In fact, a badly lit stand at Light + Building is not a design flaw. It is a product failure in public.
VICE, a lighting company from Beirut, took 54 m². Accordingly, the brief was a calm, gallery-like room where the fixtures do all the talking: no loud graphics, no flat show lighting washing the products out, nothing on the stand brighter than the thing being sold.
| Element | As built |
|---|---|
| Area | 54 m², 9 m frontage |
| Floor | White high-gloss laminate, with recessed channels for light lines along the edges |
| Feature wall | Gabion wall — steel wire mesh filled with stone blocks, grazed with warm light |
| Feature wall | Backlit perforated white wall with a three-dimensional relief |
| Lighting | 18 VICE fixtures set to a rigging-point plan at 3.5 m, plus a pendant cluster over the meeting table |
| Ceiling | Mirror ceiling panels, per the specification |
| Structure | Painted MDF, a matt-finish podium, wall brackets with metal leaf details |
| Media and furniture | Video wall, interactive screen, reception desk, high table and stools, timber deck |
White, so the light can be read
Lighting buyers look at three things: the colour of the light, the shadow it throws, and how it falls across a surface. A lighting exhibition stand painted in brand colours tints all three. Therefore the inside of this one is almost entirely white — white walls, a white gloss floor and a soft pale green on the outer faces — a neutral room in which colour temperature reads true and every beam shows its edge.
The gloss floor also does a second job. It doubles every fixture in reflection, so the pendants over the table read twice as rich from the aisle, and the light lines set into its edges draw the boundary of the stand without a single sign.
Stone against the white
A flat white wall shows you that a lamp is on. A rough wall, however, shows you what the lamp can do. The gabion wall — steel mesh cages packed with stone — is there to be grazed with warm light, so every block throws its own shadow and the texture comes alive. Opposite it, a light source behind a perforated white relief does the same thing in reverse: light coming through a surface instead of across it.
Between them, then, the two walls carry the whole argument of the stand. Same company, two completely different effects, and the buyer can see both from one spot.
Eighteen fixtures, eighteen fixing points
Nobody improvises hanging lights at Messe Frankfurt on the day. Instead, every suspended fixture needs its own point on a drawn plan, approved for the hall before the build. The plan for this stand places eighteen VICE fixtures, LF-01 to LF-18, each at 3.5 m, positioned so that each one lights something specific — a table, a wall, a product — rather than the stand in general.
Above all, that discipline is what makes a lighting stand look expensive. Light that has a job looks designed. Light that does not looks like a showroom ceiling.
Three days to a lit stand in Frankfurt
The build photographs tell the sequence. On 29 September the walls stood and the painters were at work. By 30 September the graphics and the first fixtures were going in. By 1 October the crew had lit, cleaned and photographed the stand, a day before Light + Building opened its doors.
Indeed, the order matters on a lighting stand more than on any other. Wet paint and dust are the enemies of a gloss floor and of open luminaires, so the finishes go on first, protection stays on the floor until the last moment, and the crew hangs and aims the fixtures only when the room around them is finished.
Services delivered
- Design development and technical drawings
- Rigging-point plan for 18 suspended fixtures
- Fabrication: painted MDF structure, gabion wall, perforated relief wall, podium
- Recessed floor lighting and integration of the client’s own luminaires
- Video wall and interactive screen
- Installation, aiming, and dismantling at Messe Frankfurt
- On-site project management
Frequently asked questions
Do you build stands for lighting companies?
Yes. This 54 m² stand for VICE at Light + Building 2022 was designed around the client’s own fixtures, with a neutral interior, textured feature walls and a fixed-point plan for every suspended light.
Can you hang lighting fixtures from the hall at Messe Frankfurt?
Yes, through a drawn rigging-point plan submitted for the hall. On this stand eighteen fixtures were each placed on their own point at 3.5 m.
How do you protect a gloss floor during the build?
By sequencing the work: paint and finishes first, the floor covered until the end, and fixtures hung and aimed last, when the room is clean.