Subaru North American Auto Shows 2019-2020

After designing the lighting for Subaru’s auto show spaces and press events in North America for more than ten years, we were excited to hear that Subaru wanted to try something different for the launch of the all new 2020 Outback at the 2019 New York International Auto Show. Subaru looked to their longstanding relationship with the National Park Foundation as inspiration for a new immersive brand experience that literally brought the great outdoors to the auto show floor.

In collaboration with Hansen Productions, EWI Worldwide, and 4Wall Entertainment, we helped design an immersive environment that touched on all of the senses to create the feeling of being in a National Park. Realistic scenery and props, live plants and trees, immersive audio, wraparound and walkover video, even scent, combined with lighting to transform the auto show space into a themed experience. Utilizing gobo patterns and changing color to suggest sunlight filtered through trees, the lighting became an extension of the environment itself. The tone and hue of the lighting shifted in conjunction with the hour-long multimedia program, to visually represent the passage of time from early daybreak to bright mid-day, to saturated sunsets.

We have been designing lighting for auto shows, theme parks, and attractions since the company began – that’s over 25 years of creating unique designs for clients with evolving technologies and objectives. This project blended skill sets from all of those disciplines to create an entirely new kind of auto show environment. This depth of experience, as well as extensive experience collaborating with integrated multimedia and sound design, made us uniquely qualified to be part of the design team for 2019 NYIAS, and the success of the initial show led to Subaru recreating the experience at all the major North American Auto Shows in the 2019-2020 season.

Photography by Kathryn Rapier