teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi | teamLab

As part of teamLab’s new concept of Environmental Phenomena, the architecture for teamLab Phenomena has been designed both from the inside out and the outside in, creating a structure that wraps around experience as opposed to forcibly compressing it inside.

In designing the architecture, we focused primarily on incorporating the characteristics of a life form; to create an organic shape.
We are interested in what ‘internal’ and ‘external’ mean in relation to living beings. With humans, for example, the external skin and internal organs, such as the inner lining of the stomach, are connected. There is no clear boundary between them, and they form one architectural skin. Each organ can be thought of as a particular environment that creates unique phenomena.
We aimed to create an architecture in which both the internal and external are covered and connected by an organic architectural skin. Like the relationship between skin and stomach, there is no boundary between them.
This organically-shaped architecture is similar to a living being created by lining up and connecting internal organs, and covering it with an exterior skin.
The exterior does not possess a symbolic nature, and is something indefinite or nebulous, like a cloud. This creates an architecture whose indefinite internal and external form is connected by the architectural skin.

We believe that an organic form without a distinguishable outline, like a cloud, makes it difficult to grasp the perspective and can remove awareness towards the scale of the architecture. By being liberated from the sense of scale, the architecture is released from becoming a symbol in the architectural sense, thus shifting one’s awareness from symbolism to individual experiences. When people look at the indefinite, organic architecture from outside, and enter the building from its mouth-like entrance as though wandering through its organs, we aim to create an experience akin to wandering through a forest, unsure whether they are in the forest in its entirety or merely a part of it, and unable to to grasp the scale of the space to begin with. In this way, we hope that each visitor’s experience itself will become a symbolic architecture that exists only within the viewer.