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You Can Hang Out Inside the World’s Biggest Kaleidoscope

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Olivia Harvey
Olivia Harvey
Olivia Harvey is a freelance writer and award-winning scriptwriter from outside Boston, Massachusetts. She’s a big fan of scented candles, getting dressed up, and the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley. You can make sure she’s doing okay via…read more
published Feb 21, 2022
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Spanning over 130 feet long and just shy of 20 feet high, the world’s biggest kaleidoscope may just be the trippiest art installation you can set foot inside. 

Created by London-based architectural design studio Stufish, the kaleidoscope, dubbed LEAPscape, debuted at the 2022 LEAP technology conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and showed the country’s dedication to investing in technology that will move the world toward the future.

The installation is a 360-degree experience created using seamless and warp-less mirror foil and LED floor and wall tiles. The two triangular entry and exit points were designed to not disrupt the continuity of the kaleidoscope effect.

According to Stufish’s website, the imagery within the kaleidoscope is “Saudi Arabia’s natural environment layered with digitally transforming content,” including images taken beneath the sea and in the skies above the Arabian Peninsula.

Stufish partner Maciej Woroniecki said that the team’s main challenge was to create a kaleidoscope-like installation that wouldn’t make visitors sick while walking through it.

“We developed the kaleidoscope utilising 3ds Max software and virtual-reality headsets in order to verify the effect internally but also to produce the content and ensure the patterns are effective, the transitions are fluid and that the changes to the environment are not so aggressive as to make one sick,” he explained to Dezeen.

And the order in which the scenes appear also required a lot of thought because the designers didn’t want visitors to get overwhelmed by too much detail all at once. 

“The sensations one feels between different scenes within the kaleidoscope is like stepping from one room into another — some are fully immersive and displace you from a position of stability, while others allow you to re-centre and recognise the confines of the space,” Woroniecki added.

It’s unclear if the kaleidoscope will be installed elsewhere after the LEAP conference, but stay tuned to Stufish’s social media to see if it’s headed to a city near you.

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