Full Frontal Stone + Tile Expo – Showcase stands designed by multi-award winning Australian architect, Stephen Varady.
April 3rd, 2008
Australia’s inaugural Full Frontal Tile + Stone Expo is set to hit Sydney in April, with the stands themselves reason enough for a visit.
Legendary architect, Stephen Varady has designed the showcase exhibition stands- set to be exemplars of the industry, showing off the latest tile and stone products available on the Australian market.
“Our goal was to embody the spirit of the Full Frontal Expo – a spirit of uniqueness, creativity and excellence, but to do this with designs that had multiple meanings and could be read and understood on a number of different levels by the many different people that would see them," says Stephen.
The architecture that Stephen Varady Architecture creates, taps into the unlimited possibilities of the imagination to create buildings and projects that engage with the desires and emotions of those that come to use them.
“The plan of a product expo resembles the grid plan of a city. With the location of these Showcase Stands at the head of the plan, the idea was to treat them as if they were the important public buildings of the Full Frontal city.
"With this in mind each stand has been designed to project its own separate and unique identity while remaining part of a cohesive group.
When approached to the design the tile and stone showcase, Stephen admits he was challenged.
“This has been an exciting, challenging and stimulating project. The original brief was very open in terms of design direction, size and height, and the design process began with a multitude of sketches.
"The design is now finalised, the tiles have been ordered and the stone is being cut. We have devised a way to construct, and even pre-tile, some of the elements, but the two days of construction before the exhibition in April is going to be an intense 48 hours."
The Full Frontal Tile and Stone Expo at ’The Dome’, Sydney Showground, will be held at Homebush Bay on 17-19 April 2008.

Architects drawing of the showcase
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
The Geelong College’s Sport and Wellbeing Centre ‘Belerren’ designed by Wardle is designed around bringing in natural light. But Shade Factor’s job was to help modulate and precisely control it for the most important competitive moments.
The newest brand to emerge from Cosentino’s creative crucible is Ēclos, a next-generation mineral surface that embodies the organic beauty and tactility of marble in a precision-mineral surface or material.
In the last instalment of our three-part performance seating series, Alex Bain from Architectus explains why sitting well shouldn’t feel like sitting at all and explores an unexpected success metric of the hybrid workplace: the grounding power of emotional support.
In the second instalment of our performance seating three-parter, we turn to DKO’s Michael Drescher and Jacob Olsen to peek behind Sayl’s confident architectural form and explore the ideas of inclusivity, adaptability and freedom to move as hallmarks of what sitting your best actually means.
In celebration of Bluetrain’s 20th anniversary, Studio Equator has created a new design to reflect the venue’s iconic status as “Melbourne’s Meeting Place”. Thomas Tran reports.
Designers are working in an exciting health and aged-care climate where the very definitions of the sectors are being questioned, challenged and redefined. Cox Architecture’s (formerly CODA Studios) joyous and uplifting design of Karratha Central Healthcare is a strong example of a multi-dimensional health facility providing medical services and training opportunities that contribute to the improved health and wellbeing of the regional community.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
Presented by CSR
At 3daysofdesign 2026, AHEC’s immersive exhibition traced the journey of American hardwood from forest to finished product.
Aeron Chair’s new shades, Nightfall and Jasper, arrive with a sense of quiet cohesion – no bells and whistles, no loud technicolour; just two timeless, perfectly versatile near-neutrals. But the new hues aren’t just about colour – and their significance is much more profound than their surface-level subtlety might suggest.