»We wanted to create a place to linger,« supervisor Torsten Müller remembers the first brainstorming session with the students. The architecture students, Christina Much and Hanna Mishchenko ultimately came up with the winning idea:  a rod construction that when covered with white polyamide membranes would form a roof.  Three of these pavilions were combined to offer eight square meters of room for the exhibitions to be enjoyed in peace. 

What began as a simple idea, turned out to be a large development full of details. For instance, the plug connectors in the beech rods all had to be custom made. The largest challenge, though, was the unusual form of the membranes. »The tent is only stabilized through the interaction of the structure rods and the membrane«, explain the budding engineers Tristan Bode and Alexej Urakov. So a pattern had to be created for the complicated, curved surface material.  Christian Heidenreich, an academic associate in  structural design education, was able to help using a specialized software that optimized the shape and created the layout for the material.  

The »monochromat«, a walk-in black room with red-blue exchange lighting, was a particularly eye-catching feature of the stand.  The interior walls are printed with ornaments whose colours were adjusted through numerous print experiments by architecture student Tom Lüdecke, in accordance with the specific lighting. The result is amazing: certain colours of the graphic simply disappear and reappear in rhythm to the alternating lights. 

All of the exhibits were student assignments that were created within the framework of a project in the degree programme »Visuelle Kommunikation«.  The course revolved around the creation of books: from the cover and binding techniques to illustrations and typesetting.  The students were given full freedom in terms of content for the books and so a very diverse range of publications emerged such as illustrated children’s stories, photo books and poetry collections. In a technical course with the illustrator Nadia Budde, the students designed a richly illustrated »Capital City Encyclopaedia«, that was completed in the Faculty of Design workshops and presented to the public for the first time at the book fair. Moreover, the student, Christina Plener, created the logo for the booth.

Student Participants:
Andrea Angelone, Christina Plener, Anke Zapf, Hilde Pank, Sepideh Sarihi, Mahsasadat Hosseini Nejad, Dorottya Perneczki, Helga Schneider, Christina Much, Hanna Mishchenko, Tom Lüdecke, Alexej Urakov, Tristan Bode, Stefan Wolf

Supervision:
Gaby Kosa, Katharina Staniok
Faculty of Design, Visual Communications, Typography

Torsten Müller
Faculty of Civil Engineering, Solid Construction II

Leipzig Book Fair 2015:
Hall 3
Stand G402

Opening hours:
12 to 15 March 2015
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.