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The plan for Interieur is shaped by the southern European city, writes Lucy Bullivant
How can you use architectural skills intelligently to improve the formula, identity and use of a trade fair? The solution has to be strategic rather than formal. Interieur, the nine-day Belgian interior design event, which prefers to call itself a creative design biennale, has a reputation for its high entry criteria.
Staged in Kortrijk in Belgium, in the town's 38,000sq m expo complex, Interieur's architectural ground plan was first designed by the Belgian architect Christian Kieckens (now teaching at the Architectural Association). Based on an idea proposed by adviser Andrea Branzi, it introduced a wide path through all six exhibition halls, vastly improving circulation and orientation through what was becoming an expanding group of spaces.
Dubbed the Rambla, after Barcelona's promenade, this path became the place where the biennale's thematic exhibitions were sited, and as a result, the most fought-over site for...