By focusing on architects and interior designers, the ZOW show in Bad Salzuflen has been on a
trend-setting journey since 2006.
The architectural lounge – which will be bigger and more informative than ever before, says Survey – will offer visitors an attractive point to start discovering the diverse ZOW product range in Hall 22.2.
Guided tours around the exhibition will start here, design highlights will be presented here and special talks run in cooperation with selected partners will also take place here. The architectural lounge is billed as the perfect place to pick up ideas and exchange impressions.
Lightweight construction is now said to be the latest hot topic and this will set the scene at ZOW. Both young and well-known companies in the international supplier industry will present their newest
solutions in lightweight construction, which apparently are all set to revolutionise the furniture and interior world in the coming years.
As well as offering simple handling, it is primarily the low transport, energy and packaging costs which make lightweight construction solutions so interesting.
The Lightweight Network (IGEL) will form the focal point of the exhibition, which encompasses many companies involved in lightweight construction.
The step from lightweight construction to material is not a large one. At ZOW, for the first time, visitors will have the chance to attend a material exhibition entitled ‘materialZ’ in Hall 23.2, organised by the German subsidiary of the world famous Material Connexion
material library in Cologne.
Material producers from Germany and neighbouring countries will present the highlights from the international material scene. The exhibition will look at the latest trends including topics such as smart materials, sustainability, acoustics, new surfaces and structures. So ‘materialZ’ will offer architects and designers a new forum for individual design ideas.
Bar codes are yesterday’s news, but RFID is the technology of tomorrow. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, an identification technology based on electronic data exchange.
With this technology you can quickly pinpoint the location of a product anywhere in your company without having to handle each item individually.
Horst Koitka, the managing director of Löhne-based IT company ‘abaco’, will be demonstrating, together with his partners, how RFID technology works. At the RFID factory in Hall 19, he says visitors will be able to discover the benefits of this
innovative technology.
RFID is already in widespread use in other industries but is still relatively new in the furniture sector. The demonstration that Horst Koitka will give will be on an impressive scale: The RFID factory is about 30m long and traces the route taken by a furniture item through the supply chain, from the supplier through industry to the trade, including transport by a haulage company.
E3S European Solid Surface Show in Hall 22.2 will display the trends in solid surfaces and engineered stone which have taken place at ZOW since 2006.
Here, manufacturers and suppliers will present new products and technologies from this universally used material.
‘iFurn’, the online database for the
day-to-day work of designers and
planners in the furniture and interiors industry, is celebrating its birthday.
One year after its premiere at ZOW 2008, the ‘iFurn community’ is getting together in hall 32.1 for this celebration. Virtual communication through the exchange of data is aimed to become a physical meeting place to swap experiences.
It’s hard not to think that furniture and modern entertainment systems are somehow meant for exclusive use only. Why else should the industry continue to supply furniture that takes the old cathode ray tube TV sets which are long gone from the market, and why else do end customers still have to drill a hole the size of your fist into load-bearing elements to feed through the cabling? The fact that none of this has been necessary for some time now will be evidenced at the new Mediapoint feature at ZOW.
This special exhibition will demonstrate how these allegedly irreconcilable realms of technology can function together.
The challenge facing furniture manufacturers and the supply sector is what do I need to do or take into account to support the trend toward providing universal access? What requirements does my furniture need to meet in this age of multimedia? Mediapoint is a display of specific interior settings which demonstrate how living rooms and workspaces, kitchens and bathrooms, can be designed and fitted out right now to support media access – and networked with each other.