Ehsan Kaykhah | KAY

Ventures/2020 — 2024

WINDOW

Not an exhibition. An experience.

WINDOW GARDEN 2021 entrance wall and reception, Iran
Discipline
Experiential Platform
Status
Invented format
Years
2020 — 2024

WINDOW began from a question that most of the events industry avoids: why do brands run events that everyone forgets? The answer was structural. Conventional exhibitions are designed to be attended. They deliver information. They optimise for footfall and square metres.

WINDOW inverted the model. Visitors were curated rather than counted. Spaces were designed to tell a story rather than display a product. Brands were placed in situations where they had to build a relationship instead of running a pitch — and the format measured whether that actually happened.

Six editions ran in the room between 2020 and 2024 — Tehran, Mashhad and Kish — alongside WINDOW MATERIAL, which ran entirely online in early 2021. Each edition drew 2,100+ visitors and 28+ exhibitors. 88% reported satisfaction. 79% of exhibitors acquired clients they could not have reached any other way.

That last number is the whole argument. It is not event ROI. It is brand infrastructure — and it is the reason the methodology transferred cleanly into the work now being done in California.

Capabilities

  • Experience format design
  • Curated audience architecture
  • Spatial brand storytelling
  • Guest journey design
  • Outcome measurement
Editions
6Editions
Visitors per edition
2,100+Visitors per edition
Satisfaction
88%Satisfaction
Acquired new clients
79%Acquired new clients

The WINDOW platform series

Six rooms, one online hall, and the sheet that opened each of them.

Every edition of WINDOW was announced by a single poster. Read in order they are the surviving record of the format — where it ran, who it invited, and what it was arguing that year. A chair in Tehran, a garden in Mashhad, a lattice after dark, a beach on the Gulf.

  1. WELCOME TO WORLD WINDOW, 2020 to 2024 — the platform's title plate, with the Banaye Bartar and HAYAT marks
    002020 — 2024

    WORLD WINDOW

    Edition
    The title plate

    The platform's own title plate — Banaye Bartar and HAYAT, 2020 to 2024.

  2. WINDOW DISPLAY 2020 poster — a chair drawn as a window frame on ochre paper, Tehran
    012020

    WINDOW DISPLAY

    Edition
    The first edition
    Place
    Tehran · Aghdasieh · Ava Art Hall
    Dates
    2 — 4 February 2020

    The first window display exhibition held in Iran. A chair drawn as a window frame states the premise on the poster before anyone reaches the door: the format is about how a room is seen, not how much of it is filled. Build, design, architecture, material — four disciplines in one hall for three days.

  3. WINDOW MATERIAL 2021 poster — overlapping window frames in cyan and olive on orange, virtual edition
    022021

    WINDOW MATERIAL

    Edition
    The virtual edition
    Place
    Online · Iran Trade Week
    Dates
    23 — 28 February 2021

    The edition that ran without a building. WINDOW MATERIAL took the format online for six days — the same curation, a virtual hall instead of a venue, and the newest building products in the country reachable from anywhere. The overlapping frames on the poster do the work the architecture usually did: depth without a room.

  4. WINDOW GARDEN 2021 poster — a tiled grid of blue and terracotta squares on deep green, Mashhad
    032021

    WINDOW GARDEN

    Edition
    The second edition
    Place
    Mashhad · Homa 1 Hotel
    Dates
    17 — 20 October 2021

    The first edition to take the garden instead of the hall. Open air, an Iranian garden and four evenings at the Homa — the tiled grid on the poster is the plan of that site read as a façade. Building, invest, design, material.

  5. WINDOW SCENE 2023 poster — an isometric lattice in orange and blue on graphite, Mashhad
    042023

    WINDOW SCENE

    Edition
    The third edition
    Place
    Mashhad · Imam Reza Sports Complex
    Dates
    4 — 6 July 2023

    WINDOW moved into a sports complex and staged the whole edition after dark, 17:30 to 22:30. The isometric lattice on the poster is the edition's own diagram: brands set as nodes inside a structure rather than as stands along a row.

  6. WINDOW BEACH 2024 poster — coloured rings behind a field of white window glyphs on sand, Kish Island
    052024

    WINDOW BEACH

    Edition
    Kish edition
    Place
    Kish Island · Avaye Khalij e Fars Complex
    Dates
    3 — 6 May 2024

    The format left the mainland. Four evenings on Kish, six till ten at night, in a cultural complex on the Gulf — the first time WINDOW was built for an audience that had travelled to be there. The coloured rings are the one place in the whole series where the palette breaks.

  7. WINDOW GARDEN 2024 poster — dark green cypress forms cut into arches on white, Mashhad
    062024

    WINDOW GARDEN

    Edition
    The fourth edition
    Place
    Mashhad · Hotel Homa Khayyam
    Dates
    30 June — 2 July 2024

    Garden returned to Mashhad at a larger hotel, and the poster returned to green — cypress forms cut into arches, two of the oldest shapes in the drawing of a Persian garden. Build, invest, design, material.

  8. WINDOW GARDEN Tehran 2024 poster — a row of dark green vertical louvres on white, Niavaran
    072024

    WINDOW GARDEN

    Edition
    Tehran edition
    Place
    Tehran · Niavaran Cultural-Historic Complex
    Dates
    22 — 24 October 2024

    The series closed where it started, in Tehran, inside the Niavaran complex — three evenings, four till nine. The green louvres read as both a fence and a blind: the last edition arguing once more that what you frame decides what gets seen.

The rooms themselves

A single chair inside an empty white frame on a bed of white pebbles — WINDOW DISPLAY, Tehran 2020
Visitors at a timber-framed living-room setting in the concrete hall — WINDOW DISPLAY, Tehran 2020
The TISERRA setting: dark woven pieces hung inside a white frame — WINDOW DISPLAY, Tehran 2020
The entrance wall carrying the WINDOW GARDEN mark and the exhibitors' logos, at dusk — Mashhad 2021
A suspended installation of copper blades lit against the night — WINDOW GARDEN, Mashhad 2021
Two visitors at a red kitchen setting built around a tree in the garden — WINDOW GARDEN, Mashhad 2021
The edition seen from above, its route drawn across the roof in magenta — WINDOW SCENE, Mashhad 2023
WINDOW SCENE set one letter to a banner down the face of the building — Mashhad 2023
The yellow SCENE EXHIBITION sign under a full moon — WINDOW SCENE, Mashhad 2023
The KARA STONE GROUP setting, stone laid the length of a white frame — WINDOW DISPLAY, Tehran 2020
A kitchen setting placed against the hall's glazing, the city behind it — WINDOW DISPLAY, Tehran 2020
A white slatted pavilion standing alone on the lawn between the trees — WINDOW GARDEN, Mashhad 2021
The SAMANGAN setting lit at dusk, round mirrors above the basins — WINDOW GARDEN, Mashhad 2021
The route drawn in red carpet between the pavilions, under a high sky — WINDOW SCENE, Mashhad 2023
A colour-blocked bathroom setting open to the weather on the roof — WINDOW SCENE, Mashhad 2023

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