teamLab Planets in Tokyo has set the Guinness World Record for the world’s most visited museum dedicated to a single group or artist.
Between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, teamLab Planets welcomed 2,504,264 visitors. This marks the second time a teamLab museum has set a Guinness World Record, following the 2019 record by teamLab Borderless, also located in Tokyo.
Opened as a permanent space in 2018, teamLab Borderless went on to welcome a record 2,198,284 visitors between 1 January and 31 December 2019.
As well as announcing its new record, teamLab Planets has shared more details about its upcoming expansion, which includes the addition of more than 10 installations.
Set to open in early 2025, the project also includes ‘Athletic Forest’, a creative athletic space “where people can perceive art with their physical bodies”, said teamLab founder Toshiyuki Inoko.
“We started this project, Athletics Forest, with the hopes to enhance three-dimensional and higher-dimensional thinking,” he said.
“Spatial awareness is said to be correlated with innovation and creativity…. That is why we created a three-dimensional space that excessively demands the physical body.”
Another new space is ‘Future Park’, an amusement park where guests can co-create an endlessly evolving artwork. At the new ‘Catching and Collecting Forest’, visitors will use their smartphones to capture and study various creatures.
New immersive spaces
“Physically exploring with others, discovering and catching something, then taking the chance to broaden interests based on what was caught. This is what we have been doing naturally over the long course of human history,” Inoko said.
“For humanity, the acts of catching and gathering are fun, educational, and part of life.”
Last month, the Middle East’s first teamLab Borderless museum opened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This site is also home to the Future Park and Athletics Forest installations.
Images courtesy of teamLab
