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Architects: SCHMIDHUBER
- Year: 2015
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Photographs:Andreas Keller
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Manufacturers: Hettich, Q-railing
Text description provided by the architects. Audi’s exhibition at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show is raising the bar for innovative live communication: before visitors get to see the full range of Audi automobiles on offer at the center of the brand building, they are led through an impressive presentation of the four focus themes: Audi ultra, Audi Technologies, quattro and Audi Sport. “the power of four.”
“Live communication changes your point of view,” says Michael Ostertag-Henning, Managing Partner at SCHMIDHUBER. “It is becoming more and more important to offer visitors new and different perspectives on the brand and its products, in order to speak individually to each target audience. And that’s exactly what “the power of four” does: visitors experience and interact with Audi’s four focus topics in the ‘experience walk.’ It’s a perfect interplay between brand and product. We’re turning the traditional communication principle on its head and showing the advantages of the Audi brand in a new and emotional way.”
The ‘experience walk’ begins as visitors enter the building on an escalator through a delicate, organic network structure that grows from the façade of the building. It’s a lightweight ultra structure in 3D, and the beginning of the voyage of discovery.
Visitors experience the advantages of lightweight construction, efficient engines and alternative fuels. The next area is Audi Technologies, where visitors catch their first glimpse of the main attractions of the show through a virtual window. Augmented reality is used to illustrate the technological innovations of the cars on display and give an impression of the central role that innovation plays at Audi. In the Audi quattro area, visitors meet a world of optical illusion, a game of dimension and perspective.
A room temperature of -21°c creates a world carved out of ice that illustrates the branding and lifestyle of Audi quattro. By contrast, the next section Audi Sport uses sound and visual cues to recreate the high-octane atmosphere of the racetrack and draw the eye to the motorsport icon Audi R18 at the end, turning on a banked curve and leading visitors to their right, down to the automobile exhibition area.
Visitors now enter the heart of the exhibition and are met by an impressive view across the dynamic installation of Audi cars, where the four focus areas from the experience walk are drawn together. Above the center of the hall, a huge compass turns to point to the different focus themes, directly above the new Audi A4.
“the power of four” is presented on four enormous media screens, each one with a real car mounted on the screen, and moving to interact with the virtual story told on the screen beneath it. Lighting, media and movement present each car in a constantly changing and developing story to illustrate each of the four key themes, picked out by the roving compass needle in the center of the hall.
The Frankfurt Motor Show is one of the largest and most important car shows in the world, and this year runs from 17 to 27 September in Frankfurt.
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