A corporate museum that allows people to look, listen, and touch.
Revolutionary
The Innovation Road museum was created from zero, with Yamaha staff taking the main role in creating content, and in designing the facility. An enormous number of instruments and equipment were collected, along with endless volumes of information—these were arranged to create walkways and display areas, producing a space in which visitors can experience the Yamaha Philosophy and the diversity of Yamaha business as they encounter musical instruments and sound.
Dual-View
Spurred by a desire to have people view wind and string instruments as the lively, vibrant musical instruments that they are, we displayed them as if they were being played by invisible musicians. In particular, the display reproducing the arrangement of an actual concert band is something that only Yamaha—a company that actually makes all of these instruments—could achieve.
Harmony
The Life Scenes area is subdivided into three sections—Indoor, Garage, and Outdoor—so that visitors can gain an appreciation for how Yamaha can play a role in many different parts of their everyday lives. Products that add color to our lives are arrayed at points throughout this white space that features minimal use of color.
Professional
The Sound Solution Display Area features a variety of products associated with all aspects of sound creation, from sound input to output, arrayed alongside each other, and displayed in a dark, dense space with a professional atmosphere that contrasts with the bright openness of the Musical Instrument Display Area. Visitors can view a range of speakers used for live performance and for other applications such as home use, in-store, or meeting systems, and in doing so, they can gain an appreciation for the depth and breadth of the Yamaha lineup.
Timeless
Stretching across 50 meters of space, the History Walk features many of the products Yamaha has made over the 130 years since its founding, displaying them in chronological order of manufacture. The exhibit is designed with cavities hollowed into the wall to give each product the perfect space for presentation, maintaining a uniform format without reducing the exhibit itself to a mere “list” of products.
Daizo Sato
Designer
Yamaha Design Laboratory
Risa Komuro
Designer
Yamaha Design Laboratory
Jun Nishimura
Planner
Yamaha Marketing Division
Seiichi Hashimoto
Planner
Yamaha Research and Development Division
Starting from zero, we used the strength of Yamaha employees to create a place that embodies the Customer Experience of the Yamaha Philosophy.
Starting from zero, we used the strength of Yamaha employees to create a place that embodies the Customer Experience of the Yamaha Philosophy.
With the January 2016 announcement of the construction of a new development building, we began to collect examples of all the products that Yamaha has made to date, embarking on a project to create a facility that would give people a sense of Yamaha’s history (which spans more than 130 years), and its heritage of craftsmanship.
Although a project such as this would normally be entrusted to a production company, Yamaha assembled a project team, collecting ideas and opinions and refining them into a strategy. In the early stages the younger members of the team took the fore, leading the project forward as they worked together to craft proposals for display content. Following on from their work, designers and other core members made changes and adjustments from the standpoint of spatial composition, movement flows, and experience values. Working based on the concept of a place that embodies the customer experience of the Yamaha Philosophy, we designed Innovation Road to give visitors a sense of the Yamaha Philosophy through the joy and surprise that comes from an encounter with musical instruments, equipment, and sound.
The Musical Instruments Display Area, for example, offers visitors the chance to actually play many different instruments. Our primary goal for this area was to have people come into contact with musical instruments and experience the joy of playing them, which led us to exhibit a broad range of instruments, including some that are seldom seen. The Craftsmanship Walk adjacent to this area provides visitors with insights into how the instruments they have just encountered are made in the factory, creating a flow that combines information with experiences.
The walls separating each area are a standard height of 1,350 mm. Lifting the eyes provides a view of the entire gallery that gives an immediate impression of the variety of musical instruments present, and one can simply look down to concentrate on each area. Furthermore, from a child’s point of view, this arrangement can be enjoyed like a maze.
Although there are many instruments on display, audio equipment are another example of the diversity of the products that Yamaha offers. To visually separate this functional area, in which visitors concentrate on operating the devices—at times in an atmosphere of tension—from the musical instrument performance area, we installed the huge dividing wall of shelves that comprise the “History Walk.”
Right from the start, we had always intended to offer an overview of Yamaha’s diversity, and in doing this with a wall of shelves we were able to use this display to separate the exhibition areas of Innovation Road. If you look at the History Walk, I think that you will be able to gain a feeling for Yamaha’s heritage of a sincere attitude towards craftsmanship, and of dedication to musical instruments and sound, a legacy that remains constant no matter what era you look at. Moreover, the History Walk is more than just a simple look at the past; it serves as a waypoint connecting visitors with the Innovation Lab and the Virtual Stage that lie ahead of them.
Innovation Road is not intended to be facility that simple looks back at Yamaha’s history thus far; rather, it also has a role to play as a road to the future, a hope that is reflected in both its name and logo. The logo uses perspective to express depth, representing people gathering together to create a road to innovation, a road that will serve to create a road for innovation that will lead Yamaha into the future. We would be delighted to welcome as many people as possible to see, listen to, encounter, and experience this facility, which has grown from our desire to achieve that goal.
