Background

Various Olympic museums have been built all over the world in the past 30 or so years. Almost all focus on Olympic history, omitting the most important aspect of sports—the physical experience. We wondered if we could create a museum embodying that celebrated quote of the father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin: “Winning medals isn’t the point of the Olympics. It’s the participating that counts.”

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

We embraced the challenge to establish the world’s first experiential Olympic Museum in celebration of TOKYO 2020. We invented a special place where anyone can become an Olympic athlete, transcending barriers of age, gender and nationality to compete virtually with Olympians. We collaborated with sports science specialists to designate seven categories of Olympian abilities and created experiential content for each. We designed activity fields for each sport experience, incorporating the white lines which appear in actual competitions to enhance the total immersion feel.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

We worked with experts in sports science to categorize Olympian abilities into seven categories and create experiential content for each. All contents are based on the athlete's exercise data. The details are as follows. JUMP: Pit your jumping ability against that of Olympian gymnasts and basketball players. SYNCHRONIZE: Try moving in synch with Olympic artistic swimmers and skaters. RUN: Chase the footprints to experience the feel and sound of record-breakers in Olympic athletics. THROW: Test each type of sporting equipment to experience its weight and feel, and watch videos of throwing events. BALANCE: Compete against Olympic athletes whose superior balance makes them the best at sports such as snowboarding and skateboarding. TARGET: Match skills with Olympic sharpshooters; see how accurately you can hit a target and experience the powerful force of a gun muzzle. All Games: Move your body to discover the sport with the closest pose on screen.

List the results (20% of vote)

In a 10-day period we were featured over 1,000 times on TV, in newspapers, and in online news. Both male and female visitors of various ages and nationalities helped the Japan Olympic Museum reach a record 200,000 visitors in just 2.5 months. The number of visitors is still growing exponentially. This space has become a semipermanent device for participants to actively receive the messages of the Olympic Games and its founders. Surely we are producing future Olympians here!