“Authors and their work are at the heart of the largest trade fair for books and media. The Frankfurt Pavilion is intended as a place for holding debates, sharing knowledge, making contacts and forging trends that pave the way for the future of the global publishing industry. We already look forward to the opening of this new stage,” Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, said.

Programme in cooperation with exhibitors

The programme for the Pavilion is being developed in cooperation with exhibitors. The first partners already on board are: European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL), “Georgia made by Characters”, Global EdTech Startup Awards (GESA), Norwegian Literature Abroad (NORLA), Global Illustration Award (GIA), BRIGITTE, Buchblog-Award (Book Blog Award), Deutscher Buchpreis (DBP; German Book Prize), Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis (German Children’s Literature Award), Deutscher Wirtschaftsbuchpreis (German Business and Economics Book Award)/Handelsblatt, Litprom – world literature, Favourite Book of the “Woche unabhängiger Buchhandlungen” (WuB; Independent Booksellers Week), re:publica and the U.S. General Consulate Frankfurt.

We are also pleased to announce the first authors to commit to the programme: Paul Beatty, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Cixin Liu, Meg Wolitzer, Deniz Yücel and Juli Zeh, amongst others, are expected to attend.

The opening press conference of the Frankfurter Buchmesse on Tuesday, 9 October, will also be held in the Frankfurt Pavilion this year. On the following three days of the fair, trade visitors will have the opportunity to attend book presentations, press conferences, awards ceremonies, as well as panel discussions and innovative conference formats, here. The weekend programme will include bestseller readings, discussions with authors, as well as musical performances and culinary experiences.

“Stories need good spaces. The Frankfurt Pavilion is meant to offer our partners and their exceptional content an appropriate framework. Together, we want to create a really special atmosphere for dialogue and networking between our fair visitors – a central stage for publishing professionals and lovers of literature from around the world. With the Pavilion, we are laying the foundations for greater visibility of content and authors in Frankfurt,” adds Lars Birken-Bertsch, Director Business Development at the Frankfurter Buchmesse and head of the project.

According to Kai Otto, Till Schneider and Ragunath Vasudevan of schneider+schumacher, “Books always only reveal their inner nature upon closer inspection. And then, ideally, they cast a spell directly on you… This is precisely the image we had in mind when we designed the Pavilion. A cocoon that opens up inside into an atmospheric space for multimedia presentations. The result is a significant and inviting space for coming together around books at the heart of the fair.”

“The structure can also be interpreted as the parametric transformation of a bookshelf into a space-forming construction”, said Klaus Bollinger of Bollinger + Grohmann, responsible for the strucural design.

In designing the Frankfurt Pavilion, the architects faced the challenge of creating a temporary yet solid structure that can be put into storage and rebuilt easily. To ensure that the structure can continue to be used amidst fair activities in the years to come, the other structural, scenic and industrial elements on the Agora were also taken into consideration when deciding exactly where the Frankfurt Pavilion should be positioned.

The heart of Bookfest

The Frankfurt Pavilion gives Bookfest, the festival of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, launched in 2017, a vibrant new core. In addition, events and productions will also take place in selected locations throughout Frankfurt, beyond the limits of the exhibition grounds and after the end of the fair.