jangled nerves

With its IAA 2019 trade fair presence, designed by jangled nerves (architecture) and Atelier Markgraph (communication), Mercedes-Benz takes visitors on a fascinating journey into a brave new world of mobility. The core of the presentation is a partially interactive and digital-heavy installation, employing exhibition architecture that deliberately incorporates the festival hall at the Frankfurt trade fair. The focus is always on the customers with all their needs, questions and desires. The result is an exciting customer journey around current mobility issues, while also providing for some great selfie moments.

Mercedes-Benz has always been a brand with a pioneering character. This is once again in evidence at the IAA 2019: Themes are no longer organised around sub-brands AMG, Smart, Maybach and EQ, but addressed through inspiring future scenarios that invite visitors to explore the mobility of tomorrow in interactive microcosms, and try it out for themselves. A greater use of digital and fewer cars bring a new kind of experiential dimension to the fore.

The exhibition architecture designed by jangled nerves draws a building block across the festival hall. This houses a state-of-the-art exhibition across more than 5000 m²: the »Experience«. The creative concept behind it was to approach the time-honoured building in a vastly different way to previous years. Thereby creating a stronger relationship to the hall and the city itself, and rendering the future human-automobile relationship as authentic as possible.

The adjacent »Forum« features a product show with 30 vehicles across 2500 m². It invites visitors to delve deeper into the various themes of the »Experience« by means of electric vehicles in the EQ area. A large fleet of plug-in hybrid vehicles fulfils the same purpose. The festival hall and »Forum« thus come together to form an ensemble.

How do we approach the future? How can individual mobility become more sustainable? And what might a more humane city of tomorrow look like? Questions such as these illustrate the broad spectrum of issues addressed by the Mercedes-Benz trade fair presence of 2019. The topics are examined in more depth in four immersive exhibition spaces. Atelier Markgraph created custom multimedia installations for each of these, and elaborated each one in its own design idiom.

The four scenarios (»Intuitive«, »Energize«, »Excite« and »Responsible«) form an urban context as an architecturally dramaturgical whole on different levels. At the end of the customer journey, the façade then provides the »big picture«. This is a vividly clear illustration of how Mercedes-Benz is laying the foundations for tomorrow’s new mobile world today, making it an ecologically and socially sustainable proposition.