*From 11 to 14 January 2019, DOMOTEX – the world’s leading tradeshow for carpets and floor coverings – returned as the industry’s international trends showcase. This year’s theme of “CREATE’N’CONNECT” put the spotlight on digitization and creative connectivity across all aspects of floor design, forming a leitmotif for the entire event. The “Framing Trends” special showcase featured stunning presentations, innovative product displays and an exciting supporting program, creating a lively hot spot that was particularly appreciated by visitors with a lifestyle focus.
“The floor sets the stage for any interior,” says internationally renowned designer Sebastian Herkner, highlighting the vital connective function of carpets and floor coverings within the overall design concept. “Along with walls, floors define the context and basis of interior design. 
The choice of floor material affects how we live and communicate in the resulting interior space.” As a presenter at the Framing Trends speaker’s forum, Herkner addressed the lead theme of connectivity operating at the interfaces of architecture, interior design and design.
Framing Trends – a special showcase at DOMOTEX 2019 devoted to all aspects of the CREATE’N’CONNECT lead theme – served as the creative hot spot for the overall event. It provided the main forum for presentations and debates on the megatrend of connectivity and was a standout attraction for architects, interior designers and influencers, among others. It consisted of the following three modules: “Flooring Spaces”, devoted to presentations of innovative products; “NuThinkers”, featuring a selection of university design projects; and the highly original art installations featured in the “Art & Interaction” space.
Flooring Spaces presentations on the CREATE’N’CONNECT lead theme
One of the central attractions at DOMOTEX 2019 consisted of the the “Wood Lifecycle” flooring space, a project created and designed by Total Tool Milano, featuring a “lifecycle” of wood in seven distinct steps – from the tree growing in the forest to the recycled product which completes and closes the cycle at the other end.
Every point on the cycle of this connective display featured products from a leading Italian company. A special “connectivity wheel” from the Schmidhuber company, made up of colored glass facets, invited tradeshow visitors to enter the wheel and set it in motion with their footsteps, thus generating multi-colored light reflections on the surrounding floor coverings provided by Carpet Concept, for a unique visitor experience. This technique of highlighting the connections and interactions between light and materials also promoted social connections and interactions in the form of selfies. Again within the context of the lead theme, Fletco Carpets, in partnership with its customers, created a special floor of digitally printed carpet tiles and a carpet mat. Most of the floor surface was printed with a precisely defined pattern to form a clear contrast with the pixelated outer zone.
This was continued on the walls, illustrating the almost limitless possibilities of digital printing technology for the development of brand identities, exemplified by creatively coordinated wall and floor products. In another exhibition space, Visionme, a young, Hannover-based company, presented “IUNCO”, a package of innovative visualization technologies and distribution channels for the floor covering industry. The “Virtual Showroom” offered a comprehensive display of virtual reality technology, while the “Product Catalogue” devoted itself to augmented reality and AI. An AI smartphone app enabled DOMOTEX attendees to substitute virtual floors for the real thing and experience the visual and spatial effects. The multi-platform IUNCO visualization technology allows the user to emotively connect real and virtual worlds.
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