1M Daily Commuters Take A Color Bath At Tokyo’s Hyper-Busy Shinjuku Station

June 22, 2022 by Dave Haynes

Just stumbled on this 2021 project from Montreal’s Moment Factory – a grand-scale synchronized multimedia experience in the east-west passageway of Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, the world’s busiest transit hub.

Called The Colour Bath, the project combines video displays with audio and sync’d lighting for content that changes throughout the station’s 24/7 days.

Transforming the tunnel into a beacon of Shinjuku pride, a cycle of 24 capsules reflects the time of day, different traffic periods and changing seasons. Vignettes provide explanations of the artistic narratives and include QR codes that passerby can scan to find background information. To enhance the passenger journey and lower stress in the passageway, our approach was to create a cohesive canvas where all forms of content could coexist.

Instead of a non-descript hallway for ticket holders, the plan was to confer landmark status through its transformation into a free passageway and turn it into a symbolic meeting point.

Connecting two ends of the station, the passageway handles an eye-popping 1 million commuters daily, along a 100-meter long and 25-meter wide corridor. When it was scheduled for a facelift, Moment Factory was engaged and the results were switched on last spring.

We were tasked, says Moment in an awards submission, with creating a multimedia infrastructure that would inspire wonder, calm, and continuous flow and at the same time support JR-East’s communication and business objectives. Drawing from our expertise in optimizing high-volume transportation hubs that prioritize passenger experience, our teams worked closely with JR-East and other stakeholders to provide technical design support and creative services throughout the process.

Super-nice, as always, from the Moment team.

I need to get to Tokyo, given how much there is to see – even just in that area.