Düsseldorf Will be Painted Red for drupa Visitors

DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY—Feb. 27, 2012—In the regional capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, red has been a favorite color for a long time. After all, it is the team color of the traditional 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 exhibition halls focus solely on print and media.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world are expected at this industry highlight between May 3-16, 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 just 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 locations of Kaufhof department store.

Manuel Mataré, drupa project director, said, “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, was created by Dutch Paper artist Filip Jonker. This 7.5-m-long and 2.65-m-wide boat was constructed from 2,000 kg of paper and 2,500 kg of sand as ballast specifically for drupa 2012 in Düsseldorf.