The World’s Must-Visit Immersive Experiences

© Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris

Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris

The fact that there are two museums dedicated to Yves Saint Laurent illustrates the extent to which the man behind the YSL global fashion powerhouse is still revered. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris, on 5 Avenue Marceau, is housed in the late designer’s former atelier. The building has been restored to its former working environment, giving visitors an insight into where Saint-Laurent sketched and sewed.

Stepping into Yves’ first-floor studio offers the immersive experience of exploring this spacious sanctuary with its simple desk, a rectangular board covered with a sheet of glass on two wooden trestles. The space satisfies a discernible hunger from the public to peer backstage at the mysteries surrounding the creative process, imagining the couturier in his studio draping fabric on the likes of Jerry Hall and Iman, or giving his famously reticent, shy bow to rapturous applause in the salon.

Yves Saint Laurent, the French fashion designer, started the brand in 1962

Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakesh

Part of the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent’s extensive collection is also on show at the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech in the Moroccan city that had beguiled the designer and Bergé since the 1960s. The museum is located next to Le Jardin Majorelle, a villa and garden the couple saved from development in 1980 and which now sees upwards of 700,000 visitors a year enjoying the beauty of the gardens and house with its bright blue walls.

The Marrakech museum is as much an immersive experience as the Paris space, designed so that it feels as though you’re walking into an Yves Saint Laurent jacket: textured on the outside and soft and luxurious on the inside. Compared with the rousing blue of its neighbour, the building has a tactile, earthen appearance, clad with bricks that resemble a pattern of thread.

Parisian architects Studio KO were inspired by the processes behind haute couture, using Saint Laurent’s working drawings for inspiration, they approached the design as if cutting fabric for a garment. Stepping inside feels like a cool contrast to that rugged exterior: luminous and velvety.

The museum houses an area for temporary exhibitions, a 150-seat auditorium, bookshop, café, and a research library containing 5,000 books. A permanent exhibition space houses a rotating display of signature pieces, providing a rare treat for fashion aficionados.

You might also want to pay a visit to new luxury hotel Villa Mabrouka in Tangier, the new hotel by Jasper Conran and once the secluded sanctuary of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé-Yves.

The entrance to and external view of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech

Museum of the Future

This ultra-modern building in Dubai, shaped like the eye of a needle, is a welcome contrast to the city’s thrusting skyscrapers. 3D printing has been used to build part of the structure, which is steel clad with an enormous holographic billboard inside. There are nods to tradition with Arabic poetry inscribed on the exterior, as well as an archive of 3D scans that seek to preserve culturally significant artefacts and sculptures.

The museum’s aim is “to lead, not to follow and lag behind”. As well as displaying futuristic prototypes and designs, the museum is exploring such issues as climate change, self-sustaining cities and artificial intelligence through their immersive experiences. Courses, workshops, public talks and events are also intended to help establish Dubai at the forefront of technological innovation.

ARTECHOUSE

With immersive experiences situated in Miami, Washington D.C. and New York, this team has leveraged innovative digital and experimental art to provide a reimagining of the experience of art and its parameters by utilising the latest technology throughout its exhibitions. ARTECHOUSE displays exhibitions from prominent artists as well as developing new original work in its in-house creative and production studio. With engaging audio-visuals, hands-on opportunities to influence the art on display and chances to explore the influence of light being just a handful of the offerings, visitors are sure to discover a newfound appreciation for the intangible.

© ARTECHOUSE

Designed by Amanda Levete, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon is coated in ceramic tiles that follow its undulating shape

MAAT Museum

Located on the banks of Lisbon’s Tagus River, MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) aims to nurture and promote Portuguese and international art. Designed by British architect Amanda Levete to connect people to the Portuguese capital’s rich history, the building is coated in ceramic tiles that follow its undulating shape and reflect the rippling water, altering in colour throughout the days and seasons.

Levete has dug down rather than build up, which means the new building allows visitors to walk over, under and through the museum complex, taking in the immersive experiences of texture, colour and light, with a waterfront promenade leading to an elevated roof terrace with views of the Moorish São Jorge Castle in the distance.

Exhibits in Le Grand Musée du Parfum include posters, such as this 19th century example from Parfumerie Gelle Frères

Le Grand Musée du Parfum

Perfume is amongst France’s biggest exports, so this museum, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, seemed long overdue. Rising to the challenge of how to exhibit the intangible, visitors will be able to sneak behind beaded curtains into aromatic immersive experiences such as cannabis, absinthe and “libertine boudoir”. Set in a converted 19th-century house, there’s a laboratory to explore the creative and scientific methods behind the making of a scent and a garden full of fragrant plants. On their way out, people can purchase a bottle of perfume tailored specifically to their olfactory predilections gathered during their visit.

A Newton’s Cradle display of electronic orbs, each one containing the scent of one of the perfume maker’s base ingredients