Work 05 · Booth Design

Thailand Wellness & Healthcare Expo 2026 Korea Booth

A national pavilion built as a single frame, with room for every company inside it.

Role

Booth design, brief to production specification

Type

National pavilion, multi-exhibitor

Context

WHX Thailand, Bangkok, 2026

Scope

3D design, materials, lighting, graphics, carpet

Colours: blue, red, white

Exhibitor bays, one per company

Open sides to the aisle

Specification packages issued

Objective

Designed the Korea Booth for WHX Thailand Wellness & Healthcare Expo 2026, using Korean-inspired blue, red, and white tones with clean, rounded forms to create a modern and approachable healthcare environment.

Medical trade booths default to clinical white, and a national pavilion has an extra problem on top of it: the country has to be the headline while several companies each need to be found, sat at and remembered. Strong national colour makes the pavilion legible and can easily flatten the companies inside it. The design had to be emphatically Korean at fascia height and neutral everywhere a product is shown.

Goal 01

Make KOREA readable from the far end of the hall.

Goal 02

Give every exhibitor an identical bay: name, screen, vitrine, table.

Goal 03

Keep the whole booth walk-in from two sides, with no reception desk to pass.

Context

A pavilion sells the country. The bays inside it sell the companies. Confusing the two loses both.

Pavilions compete as blocks

Korea sits beside Malaysia and Taiwan in the same hall. Visitors navigate by country sign, not by company, so the fascia is the pavilion's whole first impression.

Medical is white and hard

The category's visual habit is white panels, sharp corners and dense text. Rounded corners and a warm floor make the same content feel approachable without making it look unserious.

Devices need to be handled

Wellness and diagnostic equipment is demonstrated, not displayed. Every bay needed a work surface at standing height and power, which decided the counter section before anything else.

Audience

The hospital buyer

Comes for a demonstration and a price. Needs to sit at a table with a laptop between them and the supplier, undisturbed by the aisle.

The distributor

Scanning the pavilion for a category they already sell. Reads the three company names on the wall and goes straight to one.

The exhibiting company

Gangwon Technopark, wmit, KNU and the others each need equal standing: same sign size, same screen, same table, no best position.

Floor given to each function

Meeting tables

Demo counters

Vitrines

Circulation

Storage

Design intent, not measured data. Shows the priority the plan was built on: a pavilion of meetings, not of display cases.

What each bay provides, identically

Lightbox name signSame size, same height, same frame

Wall screenRecessed in a blue panel, above the counter

Glass vitrineLockable, at standing height

Table and two chairsFree-standing, movable through the day

The kit is the fairness mechanism: nothing in it can be upgraded by one exhibitor at another's expense.

Meeting Product Movement and service

Concept

One frame, equal bays

A rounded blue portal frames the whole footprint and carries the country name on both aisle faces. Inside it, the wall is divided into identical bays of white panel, blue screen recess and lightbox sign, and the floor is blue only where the pavilion ends. Nothing else is added: the pavilion is a frame, and the companies fill it.

Hand-drawn isometric concept sketch of the WHX Korea pavilion — Concept sketch. The system proved on paper: KOREA carried on both faces of the rounded portal, Gangwon Technopark, wmit and KNU in identical lightbox-and-screen bays along the back, dana-j on the return wall, and one table and vitrine per bay with nothing between them and the aisle.

Part 01

Blue portal

Rounded corners, KOREA on both open sides, lit from within the beam so the name holds at night-lit hall levels.

Part 02

Bay wall

White ground, blue recess, screen and lightbox name, one module repeated, which is what makes the pavilion read as a system.

Part 03

Vitrine counters

Glass-topped units on the aisle edge, blue base and white top, holding devices at the height they are demonstrated.

Part 04

Open meeting floor

Round tables and light chairs, one set per bay, placed so a conversation can spread without blocking the entry.

Identity system

01
Country at beam height
KOREA is the only word above 2.5 m. Everything else in the pavilion sits below it, so the hierarchy never has to be argued.
02
Company at eye height
Names in identical lightboxes on the wall, plus one logo on the front of each counter. Two placements, no exceptions.
03
Colour by role
Blue for structure and floor, white for anything a product sits on or against, red reserved for the national mark alone.
04
Rounded corners throughout
One radius on the portal, panels, recesses and counters, the single detail that separates the pavilion from clinical white shell schemes.
05
Lighting and carpet as boundary
Spots on the beam wash the bay wall; the blue carpet stops exactly at the booth line, which is what defines the pavilion with no walls to do it.

Isometric render of the WHX Korea booth — Isometric render. Portal beam carrying KOREA on both aisle faces, three identical bays along the back wall, vitrine counters on the perimeter and a table per bay. Included because it shows the whole system in one view.

The visit, step by step

Find Korea

The blue portal and the hanging pavilion sign locate it from the aisle.

Scan the names

Three lightboxes at eye height answer "who is here" in one pass.

Walk in

Two open sides, no reception desk, no threshold to cross.

See the device

Vitrine and screen together: the object and how it is used.

Sit and talk

A table per bay, so a meeting does not displace the next visitor.

Approach

Country first

At thirty metres the pavilion is a blue frame with one word on it. That is deliberate: visitors are navigating by country at that distance, and nothing else would survive the reduction.

Inside

Companies, in equal measure

Once past the beam the country disappears and the bays take over. Each is the same kit, so the visitor compares products rather than booth budgets.

Handover

Built from the specification

Materials, colours, lighting, graphics and carpet were issued as separate packages, so a fabricator in Bangkok could build a Korean pavilion without a Korean reference on site.

Design

Front elevation render of the Korea booth — Front elevation. Fixes the module: lightbox name, screen recess, vitrine and table repeated three times across the back wall at identical dimensions.

Side elevation render showing the dana-j bay — Side elevation. The return wall treated as a fourth bay with its own screen and partner logos, so the pavilion has no blank back.

The built Korea booth at WHX Thailand 2026 — Built, head on, beside the Malaysia pavilion. The comparison makes the case for the portal: the same floor area reads as a defined room rather than a run of panels.

The Korea booth in use during the expo — In use. Devices out of the vitrines and onto the counters, screens running demonstrations, a meeting under way at the table, the pavilion working as an office.

The Korea pavilion seen in the context of the hall — In the hall. The hanging Korea Pavilion sign and the blue frame doing the long-distance work, with Taiwan's pavilion behind, the condition the design was made for.

Outcome and reflection

A frame beats a wall

Making the country a portal rather than a backdrop gave the pavilion a silhouette from two aisles and still left every side open to walk into.

Equal kit ended the negotiation

Because every bay had the same sign, screen, vitrine and table, no exhibitor could ask for a better position, the system, not the designer, settled it.

What I would do differently

On site the devices ended up spread across the vitrine tops and the tables, and the bays lost some of their order. I would design the counter with a fixed demonstration surface and a cable route, instead of assuming the vitrine top could be both display and desk.