About
A register of exhibition design
Behind any exhibition hall is a construction problem with an absurd deadline. Fiera Emaia is a written record of how that problem is solved.
Two people checking a drawing against a half-built stand: the register is written from this side of the hoarding.
A trade stand is a building that goes up in two days and comes down in one. It arrives flat-packed on pallets, is erected without a single wet trade, has to carry lighting, power and a hundred thousand people over four days, and then leaves the hall as though it had never been there.
We file the subject by the part of the build a problem belongs to: Frame, Deck, Light, Surface, Load-in and Strike. Every entry is a build problem with a clock on it — method, tolerance, and what goes wrong when the schedule slips.
What this is not
Fiera Emaia is a publication. It is not a fair, an organiser, a venue or an agency. There are no events here, no halls to book, no stands to hire, no tickets and nothing to register for. We sell no services and take no commissions, and we name no client.
How the entries are written
Each entry is written from the practice rather than from a catalogue: the numbers that come up on site, the sequences crews actually work in, and the decisions that have to be made before a truck leaves the warehouse. Where an entry states a figure, that figure is the one the trade works to.
The photography is commissioned in halls during build-up and strike, which is why most of it shows work rather than finished stands. Drawings are ours.