ALU at the Euroshop fair
23/27 February 2008 – Düsseldorf, Germany
Hall 11- Booth E30

REVOLUTION: spatial seductions for the shop experience

New flexible, free-standing, temporary, durable displays... endlessly variable

From service to excitement, commercial displays are now increasingly a part of that shop experience which plays on consumers’ five senses. Now, at Euroshop 2008, ALU presents four new collections, designed to seduce consumers’ five senses.

Its RIBBON, MOBILE, ORIZZONTALE and OYSTER collections can be used to create an endless variety of display modules: free standing, structures, wall units, shelves…
The result is always a powerful sight: horizontal and vertical lines that zero all prior conceptions, mingle and create places for unprecedented spatial experiences.

Revolution is the name ALU has chosen to identify these four collections.
“We chose this name,” says Abramo Manfrotto, the firm’s CEO, “because ultimately ALU grew out of a revolution. Twenty years ago we took Autopole (a product created for photographers) and slapped it in the display windows of stores of all kinds, with its international success disrupting the status quo. Now it’s time for the second revolution, which is beginning here in ALU, where we work every day to change retail design. We work to enable the end user to feel a new spirit and sense of involvement in our clients’ spaces. Perhaps because of all this it’s essential to make unexpected choices, but in this sense our new payoff is perfectly clear: LEAVE OR STAY. Because the risk of change is alarming. But if we pass up the opportunity will we ever survive the doubt that remains with us?”

Collections

RIBBON is an articulated 3Dimensional strip (in black DuPont Nylon) which can be modeled along walls and in space, in any direction. Equipped with numerous accessories (shelves of different sizes, hooks, display bars, flexible metal arms...) RIBBON has a stunning aesthetic flexibility, because it can form the dominant sign on a surface but it can also glide smoothly to accent or frame a product. Its final appeal will be the result of the project designed with or around RIBBON.

ORIZZONTALE is a strip with a “lunar” touch. Cold and metallic in its tactile qualities, it actually can warm up interiors by its fantastic transition from the second to the third dimension. This satin-finish aluminum strip can be transformed from a wall-mounted support into a furnishing structure (tables, stands, walls,...), mirror frames or graphic elements, columns, display stands... By becoming an architectural element, ORIZZONTALE’s endless modulations will win it a place in the most classic of locations as well as in ultra-contemporary settings.

MOBILE is the surprise of the minimal which advances in the design of intangible volumes, it is the quotation of cultured design: a curved metal tube that made history as modernity and today, thanks to a three-dimensional joint, as a creator of lightweight mobile structures. On castors, with rotating joints, with wooden or transparent shelves holding garments or images... MOBILE can become the flexible module of a temporary store or a tubular sculpture permanently dividing an important interior.

OYSTER is a display tile whose easy opening and closure can modify the aesthetic of a sales point or a store window in just a few minutes. OYSTER has two surfaces devoted to graphic communication: the first, external, is displayed when the frame is closed, the second is revealed when the shelf (in polycarbonate and ABS) is opened. This will reveal the renewed backdrop for a product or the section used to display a wall of images, colours, brands... OYSTER will be the ideal partner for the communication in progress in contemporary retailing. The structure can be used in combination with all ALU systems.

Communication

ALU differs from its competitors not only by its product innovation but also by its outstanding concern with communication.
This year’s catalogue, the last of a trilogy begun in 2006, is Revolution.. It’s a catalogue in bold colors, designed around the innovative value of four collections. Rich and exhaustive but also provocative and even bewildering, Revolution is striking not only in the unusual presentation of the products but also the bold symbolisms, at times esoteric, like the key that opens up new opportunities, the diamond, a sign of luxury and at the same time of strength and purity, the black and white pages which refuse to admit greys… And then there’s the cover picture which sums up the spirit of the collections: a seemingly frail and vulnerable woman, almost overwhelmed, she struggles to conceal the passion blazing in her eyes.
The catalogue is designed by the Norwegian graphic design studio Bleed.

The ALU stand at Euroshop 2008 also speaks of the revolution under way. Attached to a wall running the whole length of the stand, which symbolically represents the firm’s history, the systems used to date to create rational and functional furnishings are displayed and made available to those who, still today, think of a sales point as a service space. On the other side of this line are set out the revolutionary new systems: Ribbon, Mobile, Orizzontale and Oyster, which offer an approach freer from straight lines and rigid functionality. Mobile, for example, is interpreted as a hypnotic wall of mirrors, Orizzontale glides into the reception area becoming both product and function, Oyster is like an interactive game by which the public can change the appearance of the stand... And then the special installations, fully custom, for international brands, are presented in a true peep show: a camera obscura to be entered with caution, while invisible voices whisper concepts, emotions, designs... They accompany the visitor along a seemingly risky route yet one rich in opportunities.

The stand designed by the art director Luca Pavani covers 350 m2.