In the previous post, we reviewed how absence stirs our internal potential such as the ability to hear, memorize or visualize, and helps generate boundless creative energy, imagination and beauty. Absence is also a powerful tool for businesses to amplify customer satisfaction. Even though it sounds contradictory – don’t consumers always want “more”, not “nothing”? – we feel deep satisfaction when we successfully activate our own potential and accomplish things with no one else’s help. We just forget about it because we focus too much on easy and short-lived satisfaction achieved with external support.
Maybe we should ask children how exciting it is to unleash our own creative energy with the help of absence, and make something unique.
The “Cupnoodles Museum” in Japan is an amusement park for children operated by Nissin Foods, a company that created the original “instant ramen” including Chicken Noodles and Cup Noodles®. Nissin Foods was founded by a legendary entrepreneur Momofuku Ando (1910-2007), who single–handedly invented instant noodles in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in WWII to help alleviate post-war food shortage. In a sense, instant ramen was born from the absence of food.
(Nissin Cupnoodles Museum Logo courtesy of Nissin Foods)
As an extraordinary entrepreneur who not only invented the instant noodles but also established the entire manufacturing process to mass-produce them, Ando’s creed was “creative thinking” and perseverance. When he developed his first instant ramen, which was later named Chicken Noodles, he spent an entire year experimenting in his backyard shed, alone, with no days off and only four hours sleep a night. Nissin built the Cupnoodles Museum to honor Ando’s undeterred creative spirit with the mission to provide children with opportunities to get inspired, think and become creative. The museum logo, expressed as “!!!,” represents the creative spur Nissin wants to generate at the museum.
Image courtesy of Nissin Foods
Designed by Kashiwa Sato, who’s also known for the branding work for Uniqlo and Imabari Towels, “Absence” is embraced throughout the museum to maximize creative chemistry. When you enter the building, the first thing you see is the large, empty stairway that sits under the high-rise ceiling. If this large void is your unexplored potential, the stairs letting you climb higher stand in for your creativity. The stairs are high and may be a challenge for small kids to climb, but that’s how you unleash your creative energy and make the impossible possible: you need to sweat. By using their own legs to carry their bodies, visitors’ minds are already starting to be focused on the excitements laying ahead.
Top: Instant Noodles History Cube Bottom: Momomfuku Theater
Image courtesy of Nissin Foods
We never really associate amusement facilities for kids with minimalism or a minimalist approach. We somehow assume that we need to be mature to appreciate the concept of minimalism, and kids are too young for that. So we typically offer them “more” – more rides, more animal shows, more arcades, more ice cream stands and deafening music. In our mind, that’s what the kids love.
But maybe they do not care about “more” as much as the adults think. The Cupnoodles Museum is surprisingly minimal. There is nothing sensational, loud and distracting. All kinds of excessive stimulus you typically expect at kids’ amusement parks are absent.
For example, the colors are strictly controlled. Except for the “Cup Noodles color,” which is red and white, the only colors allowed in the building are the brown of the wood and some black required in certain parts of the facility. The sounds are also controlled and subdued. There is no loud, blasting music or sound effects that bombard your ears. It’s really quiet for a kids’ destination for fun.
Your mind starts to clear up and relax.
Image courtesy of Nissin Foods
The exhibit space is also minimalist. The museum does not offer any attractions in which all you need to do is sit and wait. Instead you have to use your body – see, touch, listen – and eventually, think. The exhibit has six themes:
- Find something that does not exist yet
- Leverage everything around you to help achieve your creation
- Grow your ideas by sharing
- Always respect different perspectives
- Forget about the common sense and social norm
- Never give up
The picture above is exhibit number 2: Leverage everything around you to help achieve your creation. On large, white walls are the items that we see in our daily lives. But no further help are offered. Children have to use their own creativity to imagine what they could potentially accomplish by leveraging those items. There is very little hand-holding here, even though it is a museum aimed for children. The message seems to be “do it yourself”, rather than “we’ll do it for you.”
