Visiting trade fairs can be tiring, but planning them just got easier.
Minimal Viable Product
HDFair® calculates trade fair booth layouts within seconds, takes individual requirements into account, and shows where space is used most efficiently. This turns chaos into structure and planning into a process that practically explains itself.
Client
MCH Group AG
Rollout
2010
Technologies
Java
Research and Practice
HDFair® was developed in close collaboration between MCH Group, ETH Zurich, and the research team Kaisersrot®, pioneers in generative spatial planning who laid the foundation for the work of user generated design today. The result is a digital planning system that bridges research and real-world practice.
1
Initial Situation
The MCH Group AG, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is one of the world’s leading companies in trade fair and event management. As the organizer of iconic formats such as Art Basel, Swissbau, Igeho, and HOLZ, MCH operates one of Europe’s most advanced exhibition centers, offering more than 160,000 m² of space in Basel, with additional locations in Zurich and Lausanne.
Each year, complex spatial layouts are created there for national and international exhibitors that vary in size, infrastructure requirements, neighborhood preferences, and target audiences. Until recently, every change in hall planning required significant manual effort — from space allocation and aisle layout to the consideration of brand clusters and special zones.
With HDFair®, a rule-based co-design app for dynamic trade fair booth placement, this process is now digitalized and accelerated. The software supports both planners and exhibitors, enabling precise, transparent, and time-efficient master planning from space allocation to final layout approval.
The challenge
Trade fair planning requires balancing a wide range of factors: booth sizes, proportions, access points, power and water connections, preferred or avoided neighbors, spatial orientation, visitor flow, and safety routes. At the same time, new conditions constantly arise during the planning phase — additional exhibitors, changing requirements, or structural adjustments within the hall.
Until now, there has been little to no system capable of reflecting this level of dynamic complexity without losing sight of quality and fairness. The challenge for MCH was to shorten planning time, enable more layout variations, and automatically account for the individual needs of exhibitors. This is precisely where HDFair® comes in.
2
Optimized from the ground up
Whether it’s a single hall or an entire exhibition center, HDFair® helps you create the optimal booth layout. The software recalculates new layouts within seconds whenever areas, halls, or exhibitor numbers change. Each version is automatically adjusted and optimized, ensuring that every floor plan evolves into the best possible solution.
HDFair® generates trade fair layouts in the shortest possible time, taking all defined rules and preferences into account. The size, proportion, orientation, and infrastructure of each booth are captured in a central data model and automatically considered in every recalculation.
3
Trade fair planning that attracts visitors
Defining attractors
With so-called attractors, key areas or thematic clusters can be defined around which exhibitors of specific categories are grouped.
Grouping exhibitors
This creates logical, thematically structured hall layouts that provide orientation and guide visitors purposefully through the space.
“Thanks to HDFair®, a clear and thematically structured hall layout was created. Visitors now move intuitively through the exhibition instead of getting lost.”
4
Real-time scenario planning
Once key positions have been defined, planners can manually intervene, compare variations, or move individual booths. Aisle widths, booth dimensions, and orientations can be adjusted directly. HDFair® automatically checks whether all constraints and exhibitor requirements are still being met.
Redefining spaces
Aisles, areas, and proportions can be adjusted directly within the floor plan. This allows planners to refine hall layouts with precision without losing the overall logic of the system.
Precision by drag and drop
Booths can be manually placed, moved, rotated, or resized. This gives planners maximum control, and every decision becomes instantly visible in the layout.
Trust is good. Quality control is better.
The integrated quality indicator displays deviations between target and actual data in real time. This allows planners to immediately see where adjustments are needed and maintain a clear overview even in complex layouts.
5
Better through experience
HDFair® allows the reuse of existing or past trade fair plans, which is especially valuable for recurring events. Projects can be compared, and layouts or configurations can be transferred. This makes every new planning process more efficient without limiting creative freedom.
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