The Frankfurt IAA 2011 was once again the international must-attend event for all car enthusiasts. There were lots of highlights to discover at the fair, and not just among the cars on show. The motor show was again this year - as always - a major event for fair stand and lighting design. All manufacturers built elaborate sets for their cars, based on sophisticated lighting and media designs harmonized to perfection.

Several stands included a number of lights distributed by Lightpower, and there were a great many Clay Paky moving heads among the lights chosen. Clay Pakys were used, together with other lights distributed by the German company, on the Daimler AG, Volkswagen AG and Audi AG stands.

One particularly innovative design was to be found at the BMW AG stand in Pavilion 11. The 9000-square-metre stand was illuminated to daylight intensity with 930 moving lights and 700 spotlights. It took 60 DMX-Universen units controlled by 3 full-size grandMA2s, all networked together with 8 MA network processing units (NPUs), to achieve this.

The fact some of the cars at this stand moved on a mini-circuit inside the pavilion posed a particular challenge. To illuminate them properly and follow them on their way around the circuit, the Rockservice team - who dealt with sound, lighting and rigging in cooperation with the designer SfS Project - used a new type of automated tracking system, currently only rentable from Rockservice.

Participants in the BMW stand design

Design and management agency: Blue Scope Communications Projektgesellschaft mbH, Berlin

Light and truss design: SfS Project Peter Heilig, Aschaffenburg

Light engineering: Rockservice GmbH, Salzgitter