BAU celebrates a successful comeback
After a break of more than four years, BAU - the World's Leading Trade Fair for Architecture, Materials, Systems - is back with an excellent result. Between 17 and 22 April, around 190,000 visitors came to the Messe München exhibition centre to find out about innovations and trends from the 2,260 exhibitors (2019: 2,250) from 49 countries (2019: 45 countries). By the halfway point of the fair, visitor numbers had approached the 2019 level. However, warning strikes at German airports and in local and long-distance public transport slowed down the positive trend. Nevertheless, BAU achieved a very successful result despite these general conditions. The 365-day industry platform BAU Insights, which was launched just two months ago, was also very popular: up to 40,000 people used the new online portal for the construction industry every day.
“BAU has once again proven that it is and remains the most important stage for innovations and premieres in the building sector. Despite the four-year forced break, more companies presented themselves in Munich than ever before. This underpins the very positive response to trade fairs and, in particular, to leading world trade fairs, as was already evident in 2022,” say the two heads of the trade fair Reinhard Pfeiffer and Stefan Rummel, summing up BAU 2023.
Dieter Schäfer, Chairman of the BAU Exhibitors’ Advisory Council, agrees that BAU 2023 was a great success: “We did everything right by moving BAU 2023 to April. Fully occupied halls and a high proportion of international visitors underline the relevance of BAU. It was all the more important that the fair took place again after more than four years. In future, BAU will return to its usual January date.”
In addition to the Federal Minister of Construction, Klara Geywitz, Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Hubert Aiwanger, also took a look at the innovations and trends in the building industry at BAU: “The largest construction and architects’ trade fair is a successful networking platform for planners and building tradesmen. We need the very innovations presented there on how to reconcile climate protection and the challenges such as affordable building and housing. The fair stands for progress, growth and competitiveness and sets the course for the future in building and urban planning.”
For Felix Pakleppa, General Manager of the Central Association of the German Building Trade (Zentralverband des Deutschen Baugewerbes), BAU sends a trend-setting signal to the building industry after the long forced break: “With the key themes of digital transformation, the future of living, resources and recycling, as well as modular building, the biggest challenges and trends of the moment have been perfectly mapped out. This year, BAU thus once again offers a great platform for creating future perspectives.”
Katharina Metzger, President of the Federal Association of the German Building Materials Trade, also considers the return after more than four years a success: “We are more than satisfied with BAU 2023, because such an important sector cannot afford to be without a trade fair platform for six years. Even if important manufacturers for our specialist dealers with their craftsmen were unfortunately not on board this time, we hope that we can count on the old presence of suppliers again in January in 2025.”
Andrea Gebhard, President of the Federal Chamber of Architects, emphasised the important significance of personal exchange: “BAU 2023 reflects the current issues of the building industry. It is the ideal meeting place for architects and planners to discuss both innovative materials of the future and social issues such as affordable housing.”
BAU project manager Matthias Strauss is already looking forward to the upcoming events in the BAU Network: “After the successful BAU, the entire team is already very much looking forward to the digitalBAU conference & networking premiere next July as well as the next digitalBAU in February 2024.”
Internationality of visitors reaches record level
At the top of the international visitor ranking of BAU are Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Thanks to strong growth, Poland and Turkey take fourth and fifth place. Overall, the international share is almost 80,000 visitors. This corresponds to 40 percent of the total number of visitors and marks a record figure. In percentage terms, the international share is thus still a good deal higher than the previous record result from 2019 (37 per cent).
The number of Chinese visitors is particularly noteworthy. With 1,600 people, China is one of the top 10 visitor countries at BAU 2023, a positive surprise after the Corona restrictions on travel from China to foreign countries were only recently relaxed.