If it doesn't fit, we'll make it fit. Or should we say: "Nothing is impossible?" A congress centre in the middle of the exhibition? Sure. Is there a perfect retreat in a full trade fair hall? There is! A trade fair concept to go? No problem. Let's take a look at a few exciting room-in-room concepts.

The world's leading trade fair OTWorld made a name for itself in 2016, when a multifunctional congress centre was integrated into the industry exhibition. The excellent premiere performance has been further refined since then: in 2018 there were seven fully equipped halls, a congress office, hospitality suites, and a modern e-poster exhibition on a total of 10,000 square metres. The lighting was just right and could not be overlooked within the industrial fair. The short distances in this new "neighbourhood" enabled a different interplay between the conference programme and exhibition. The visible result: lively movement of congress visitors, exhibitors and speakers between lectures, posters and exhibition stands - similar to a bustling marketplace where news is exchanged cheerfully. New ideas have already been collected for 2020.

Silence. Right in the middle of the exhibition hall. In order to discuss prototypes and new ideas intensively with customers and experts, Reifenhäuser invited visitors at K 2016 to a sound-insulated "RethinkTank". Integrated into the trade fair stand, the room offered perfect visual and acoustic seclusion for distraction-free conversation. The outer space decor inspired guests to imagine future innovations, before going back to the novelties of the present.

What has long been part of coffee culture is conquering the event industry. The motto is: 'To go, please!' The therapie Leipzig is Germany's largest trade fair with a congress for therapy, medical rehabilitation, and prevention and is a popular address for further and continuing education. Sounds good - that's why the successful concept is now also available to go. The therapie on tour was brought to Bochum for the first time last year and made a stop at the RuhrCongress - with more than 70 exhibitors, a conference programme, and the well-rehearsed team from Leipzig. After a successful first edition, the event will return to North Rhine-Westphalia in autumn 2019 and the first therapie Hamburg has already been booked.

The processes that dominated the autumn meeting of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine attended by 6,000 nuclear medicine specialists in Düsseldorf are not visible to the naked eye. The event took up 40,000 square metres of event space - plus the entire Düsseldorf Congress Centre and two exhibition halls. A modular spatial concept was used to divide one hall into meeting rooms and eight plenary halls, the largest of which for almost 3,000 listeners, the smallest for 20.

Entire stadiums have already been rebuilt for football world championships. And for the Robot World Cup, an an entire exhibition centre was turned into a competition arena. On 80,000 square metres of exhibition space, more than 70 playing fields were created for the RoboCup in summer 2016, each designed down to the smallest detail in accordance with international standards and regulations. The artificial grass on which the autonomous robots battled for the title was exactly three centimetres high, and not a millimetre more. Elsewhere, the AIs went through simulated disaster zones looking for survivors or put on their dancing shoes for a little light entertainment.

Photo credits
Lutz Zimmermann, Kai Abresch, Gunnar Mitzner, Uwe Frauendorf, Tom Schulze, FAIRNET