INSIDE TEM

Toyota's new mindfulness museum in Bangalore blends Japan, India and the future of mobility.

- Smita Tripathi

In an age when automotive showrooms are rapidly morphing into lifestyle statements, Toyota Kirloskar Motor has chosen a quieter, more contemplative route. Its new initiative, tem-short for Toyota Experiential Museum-opened this week inside Bengaluru's Phoenix Mall of Asia, and it resists easy categorisation.

Part cultural space, part tech-driven installation, part meditation on the meaning of movement, tem is all about the experience.

Spread across 8,200 square feet on the mall's ground floor, the centre presents itself as a "five-senses experience," a blend of Japanese minimalism and Indian notions of mindful living.

Toyota executives frame tem as an experience, a place where mobility goes beyond cars, it is a philosophy of how people navigate a fast, saturated world.