inside teamLab phenomena abu dhabi

teamlab phenomena explores natural and spontaneous orders

Neighbouring the Louvre and the upcoming Guggenheim on Saadiyat Island, teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi opens next week as the collective’s largest museum project to date. The building itself, a low-lying, sinuous white structure designed by teamLab Architects in collaboration with MZ Architects, is a continuous, organic form, conceived as an extension of the interactive experience within. Inside, nothing is static. Since the early 2000s, the Tokyo-based collective has been creating environments where the boundaries between viewer and artwork dissolve. In Abu Dhabi, this principle explored as an environment in constant flux. Inside, none of the artworks are fixed installations; instead, they emerge from shifting conditions and respond to the visitor’s presence. teamLab describes them as phenomena — interactions of light, air, water, temperature, and sound that exist only when the surrounding environment permits. Visitors don’t so much view the work as activate it, navigating through various immersive multimedia environments that behave themselves like the natural systems they depict.

The floor too is sculpted in three dimensions, encouraging visitors to navigate with their entire bodies across both dry and wet zones charged with light, scent, and sound engaged in what the collective calls ‘spontaneous order’. The space then becomes something remembered as a sensation, or an imprint shaped by movement and perception. Following our visit before the museum officially opens doors on April 18th, we rounded up some of our highlights.

all images courtesy of teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi

a monumental levitating form emanates and absorbs energy

Among the standouts is a monumental sphere that hovers in an immersive, glowing red chamber. Titled Levitation Void, the piece embodies the museum’s central idea that energy, not mass, gives form. The sphere doesn’t rest on anything nor is it suspended, but it simply exists in equilibrium. Upon touch, it, and it wobbles, sinks, or rises before gradually restoring itself. teamLab describes it as ‘an order of energy’ born from the conditions of the room, making the artwork a state of being that depends entirely on the environment to exist.

This responsive behaviour plays out across transitional corridors and expansive, cave-like spaces. The experience flows continuously, sometimes drawing visitors through tight, winding passages and into towering halls punctuated by tree trunk-like columns rising from uneven ground. These surfaces respond dynamically to movement with color, line, and light, and the effect is immersive and often somewhat theatrical, calibrated to create a shifting spatial awareness that prompts intuitive movement. The artists at teamLab describe it as designing for a state in which the space feels continuous and the viewpoint moves with you. In one such space, a simulated current of water maps itself through fine streams of light. Each of these lines is a real-time simulation of fluid behaviour, redrawing itself in response to motion. When visitors move through the room, the currents alter direction or form eddies around them.

Levitation Void

unpredictable senses of rhythm mimic biological orders

At the edge of a smaller gallery, a swarm of blinking lights — almost like digital fireflies — reacts to motion. This is Autonomous Abstraction, where each dot of light has its own cycle. When touched or approached, the rhythm is disrupted and randomized, but slowly, neighbouring lights begin to fall back into synchrony. teamLab calls this spontaneous order, a term borrowed from biology and complex systems, where coherence emerges without central control. The effect feels natural and self-organizing, like the choreography of birds or the blinking of fireflies in a forest.

the organisms disperse when touched, the regather

iridescent ovoids invite to become one with the elements

A vast, shallow pool forms one of the museum’s most playful and sensory-rich environments. Visitors wade through a mirrored garden filled with glistening ovoids that gently bob in the water. When pushed, each form emits a glowing light and musical tone; others nearby respond with synchronized colour and sound. The entire space is enlivened in interaction — every movement sends a ripple, echoed and magnified by the surrounding elements.

Another water-based room extends this sense of resonance, hosting teamLab’s ongoing En Tea. A darkened tea ceremony space hosts floating lamps and glowing cups of tea that respond to touch and the act of pouring. The light begins to pulse in rhythm with the visitor’s actions, expanding across the space.

floating iridescent ovoids

the vortex and biocosmos draw the body into flow

One of the more physically intense rooms at teamLab Phenomena is Biocosmos, where the floor disappears and is replaced by a large net stretched across a void. As visitors walk across it, the net bounces gently beneath them, heightening disorientation. Above and around, digital projections of flocks of birds fly in coordinated motion, forming what feels like a singular entity. teamLab draws from studies of swarm intelligence, creating a spatial model of time and form where separated elements — birds, rhythms, light pulses — act as one. The result is a feeling of being entirely inside a system.

A recurring motif across the museum, and much of teamLab’s works across the worls, is the vorte, first inspired by the Naruto whirlpools of Japan. In Abu Dhabi, the idea takes many forms. In one room, thousands of small foil balloons swirl in air currents that shift unpredictably, at times chaotic, at others spiraling around a central invisible axis. In another, clouds of soap bubbles coalesce, rise, and dissolve, forming and unforming constantly. Elsewhere, beams of light converge into a dynamic central vortex of movement. These works explore the vortex as both a natural force and a cognitive phenomenon: a way of making sense of movement and drawing the body into flow.