teamlab borderless jeddah set to open in the summer of 2024

teamlab borderless jeddah to open june 10, 2024

teamLab Borderless Jeddah, a collaborative initiative between art collective teamLab and the Saudi Ministry of Culture, is set to open in Jeddah Historic District on June 10, 2024. The immense building spans approximately 10,000 sqm and represents the first-ever middle east location of the groundbreaking museum. Visitors will enjoy sights of the shores of Alarbaeen Lagoon, overlooking panoramic views of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leading up to the opening, teamLab is working on numerous large-scale artworks, and has now unveiled the massive creative athletic space, Athletics Forest, alongside the co-creative educational project, Future Park. The project is part of the ministry’s revitalization program for the Jeddah Historic District, one of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 goals.

all images © JHD Photography

immersing visitors in boundless art amid a unesco site

teamLab Borderless is a world of artworks without boundaries, a museum without a map created by the Japanese art collective. Artworks move out of rooms, communicate with other works, influence, and sometimes intermingle with each other with no limitations, forming one borderless world. As people immerse their body in this art, they ‘wander, explore, and discover’. When teamLab Borderless first opened its doors in Tokyo in June 2018, the museum welcomed over 2.3 million annual visitors, and set the world record for the most visited museum by a single art group. As a collaborative initiative between the Saudi Ministry of Culture and teamLab, the all-new teamLab Borderless Jeddah will break new grounds in the MENA cultural landscape.

Untitled © teamLab

revealing the athletics forest and future park

The immense teamLab Borderless Jeddah will comprise the Borderless World, Athletics Forest, Future Park, Forest of Lamps, as well as EN TEA HOUSE, exhibiting some 80 independent yet intricately interrelated digital and interactive installations. Recently completed, teamLab’s Athletics Forest is a creative athletic space based on understanding the world through the body and thinking about it three-dimensionally. It trains spatial recognition and promotes the growth of the brain’s hippocampus. The first artwork on display in the space is Untitled (2020-). This interactive installation reveals a group of giant ovoids that slowly and continuously float and sink. When they are pushed by a person or receive an impact, they change color and produce a tone unique to that color. The surrounding ovoids also respond one after another, continuously changing to the same color and emitting the same tone.

Untilted (2020-), sound: Hideaki Takahashi | © teamLab

The second installation, Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Sphere (2020-), is a space made up of spherical bodies that people can jump on. Rotating at high speed, the spheres slow down and stop rotating once people approach them, making it easier to step on. When people bounce on the spheres, the spheres light up. If they bounce on several spheres of the same color in a row, those spheres will pop, releasing particles of light into the air. Continuing to bounce on more spheres of the same color in succession will cause caterpillars to appear. If they keep jumping on spheres of the same color until all are popped, numerous caterpillars will be born.

Rapidly Rotating Bouncing Spheres in the Caterpillar House (2020-) | sound and © teamLab

Up next is the Multi Jumping Universe (2022-) designed as a flexible surface that multiple people can jump on at the same time, and sink or jump higher than usual. This distortion attracts ‘stardust’ from a simulated universe and births new ‘stars’ which will keep growing if one keeps jumping on them. Meanwhile, Soft Terrain (2020-) is a smooth, 3D slope filled with various granules of light that flow from high to low elevations along the terrain, layering onto each other and creating a stratum pattern. The ground sinks beneath people, and granules of light gather in these sunken areas. As people walk, the granules burst out and intermix, changing the stratum pattern. The color of the granules of light change with the seasons, in the real flow of time.

Multi Jumping Universe (2022-), sound: DAISHI DANCE | image © teamLab

Lastly, Aerial Climbing (2018-) is a space where horizontal bars of varying colors are suspended by ropes and float three-dimensionally in the air. People use these bars to attempt to navigate the space in mid-air without falling. As the bars are linked, the movement caused by a person will affect the bars on which other people are standing. Individual experiences will differ depending on the many ways that the bars link together. When people climb, the bars shine brightly and produce sounds unique to their colors. The more people climb onto bars of different colors, the more sounds are played simultaneously. Flocks of birds then fly freely in this space and take on the hues of the bars being stood on.

Soft Terrain in Granular Topography – A Whole Year per Year (2020-) | sound and © teamLab

Meanwhile, the teamLab Future Park is an experimental educational project based on the concept of collaborative creation (co-creation). The art collective conceives it as an amusement park where people can enjoy creating the world freely with others. The first installation, Connecting! Block Town (2016-), emulates a city where trains, cars, and various vehicles run, by placing connecting blocks on the table. The same type of blocks can connect to each other, allowing vehicles to run along roads and train tracks created by the connections. These vehicles evolve as users connect more blocks. From road to water, the museum introduces Sketch Ocean (2020-) as an interactive aquarium world.

A Window to the Universe where Little People Live (2022-) invites you to draw lines with a light pen or create shapes with a light stamp. Each line has a special power depending on its color, and influences the little people’s world. The shapes created by the light stamps appear and start to move. Yellow lines make the little people bounce and fly. Blue lines speed up the little people, making them run faster. Lastly, complementing this artwork is A Musical Wall where Little People Live (2013): ‘The little people run around the table, oblivious to us. However, if you put something, such as your hand, on top of the table, the little people will notice and jump on to it. Depending on the shape of the objects you place on the table, the little people will slide, jump, or climb. Place many objects on the table and the little people will play with delight,’ describes teamLab.

The tickets for the museum are now available on the official website.