In the regional capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, red has been a fa-vourite colour for a long time. After all, it is the team colour of the tra-ditional football club Fortuna Düsseldorf. Every four years, however, the entire metropolis on the River Rhine paints itself red – in time for drupa in Düsseldorf. This is when the city turns into drupacity. For two weeks, longer than any other trade fair in Düsseldorf, the exhibi-tion halls focus solely on print and media. Hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world are expected at this industry highlight between 03 and 16 May 2012. Add to this 1,850 international companies with about 30,000 employees at the trade fair stands and 3,000 expected journalists. Düsseldorf will be a home to all of them during this time. Not only the drupa community will experience the special drupa flair. Numerous attractive events and activities are available for the residents of Düsseldorf to convey the core topics of drupa in an innovative and creative way that is easy to understand by interested non-professionals.
This year, the centre of attraction will certainly be the shopping malls around Königsallee Boulevard, or “the Kö”, as the locals say. The project drupart offers young artists the opportunity to present their innovative works involving print and paper at locations such as the Schadow Arcades, Stilwerk, Sevens and the three Düsseldorf loca-tions of Kaufhof department store.
Manuel Mataré, drupa Project Director: „Of course, we want to be good hosts for our international trade fair visitors. In addition, we would also like to convey a bit of the positive drupa atmosphere to the citizens of Düsseldorf.”
A specific eye-catcher this year will certainly be the paper boat drupaperboat, which will anchor at the Kö-Graben canal. Dutch Pa-per artist Filip Jonker created this 7.5-m-long and 2.65-m-wide boat from 2,000 kg of paper and 2,500 kg of sand as ballast specifically for drupa 2012 in Düsseldorf. With support from a German company for special coatings, Jonker had additional waterproof layers added for trips on the ocean. For his maiden voyage last September, he travelled from his hometown of Rotterdam via the channel to the Thames festival in England. In Düsseldorf, the drupaperboat will anchor at the heart of the city at the Kö-Graben canal.
Other attractive exhibitions at the Kö will show extraordinary projects around paper as a material. For example, the Kö-Gallery will focus on highly fashionable paper accessories. Individually designed paper furniture is on display at Stilwerk, and at the Schadow Arcades, an interactive project deals with the interesting topic of “Augmented Reality” (computer-assisted expansion of our perception of reality).
In addition to these visual highlights, restaurants and hotels in Düsseldorf will be decked out in red and offer their guests special culinary delights or wellness packages. Drupaul and Drupaula, the per-sonable greeting teams of the trade fair, will meet international visi-tors at the Düsseldorf Airport and hand out cordial greeting cards. Sponsored by Lufthansa, with the sweet addition of pasted-on gum-my bears, they add flavour to the guests’ arrival in Düsseldorf and offer some brief information on the attractive offers at drupacity.
A special drupacity guide summarises all activities during the course of drupa and also contains a city map to help with orientation. It is available at all trade fair info points and, of course, at the Exhibition Centre itself. The eye-catching red drupa double-decker buses offer tours to renowned places in Düsseldorf. They also function as additional mobile information centres for the trade fair visitors.
