The collective already opened an engaging museum in 2018, the Mori Building Digital Art Museum, located on the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo. Recently, TeamLab planned to extend their immersive installations to Europe, by realizing a new museum in Utrecht in the Netherlands, expected to open its doors to the public in 2024.
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TeamLab is a Japanese collective founded by the engineer Toshiyuki Inoko in 2001 and composed of artists, programmers, engineers, mathematicians, architects and animators who are widely known for their immersive light installations. As already happened in Tokyo, Fukuoka and New York, TeamLab is about to open a new museum of digital art in Utrecht, in the Nowhere space, a project developed and founded by Martijn Sanders and Jeroen van Mastrigt in the framework of the "Healthy Urban Quarter" announcement of the Utrecht City Council. "The Netherlands is a country with a high digital awareness and therefore the perfect basis for collectives and digital art exhibitions," explains Jeroen van Mastrigt. "Nowhere will make the future accessible, engaging and entertaining for a wide audience, and promises to be an invaluable addition to the Dutch museum and attraction industry”.
Nowhere's space has been designed to display works by the world's leading artists and to facilitate the presentation of digital and interactive works, such as those by teamLab. The collective's exhibition will transform Nowhere's 3,000 square meters into an experience that will always present itself to the public in a different form. "We are very excited to have the opportunity to bring this permanent exhibition to Nowhere," teamLab comments. "The collective aims to explore the relationship between the self and the world and new perceptions through art. Our permanent exhibition in Nowhere will also host the Future Park and Athletics Forest projects. Future Park is based on the concept of collaborative creation, or co-creation, where visitors can enjoy creating the world freely with others. Athletics Forest is a new 'creative athletic space' that helps train spatial awareness".
Nowhere space will be located on the ground floor of Wonderwoods. Designed by the Italian architect Stefano Boeri and MVSA Architects, Wonderwoods is a visionary real estate complex that will rise in 2023 in the heart of Utrecht and will see the seemingly distant worlds of the city and nature coexist together. In fact, with a height of 90 meters and able to accommodate about 200 apartments, Wonderwoods is a "smart building" that proposes an unpublished version of the famous Bosco Verticale (‘Vertical Forest’). Protagonists of the tower's facades will naturally be 10 thousand plants of 30 different species, equivalent to the vegetation of a hectare of forest, capable of producing about 41 tons of oxygen every year. On the ground floor there will also be the Vertical Forest Hub, documentation and research center on urban forestry in the world, and there will be office areas, fitness and yoga areas, bicycle parking and public and recreational spaces.
Cover image: MORI Building Digital Art Museum. Photo courtesy: teamLab Borderless.
Written by Maria Eleonora Piva
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