Architects’ model, New York City site View from Houston Street, showing a workshop setting...

Conceived as an urban think tank and mobile laboratory, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will explore issues confronting contemporary cities and provide a public place and online forum for sharing ideas and practical solutions. The BMW Guggenheim Lab and all of its programming will be free to the public. The new website (bmwguggenheimlab.org) and online communities will create and extend the opportunity to participate in this multidisciplinary urban experiment worldwide.
Over the six-year migration of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, there will be three different themes and three distinct mobile structures, each designed by a different architect and each traveling to three cities around the world. The inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab will be located on the border between Manhattan?s Lower East Side and East Village, at 33 East First Street (between First and Second Avenues), on a site owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Designed by Atelier Bow-Wow, an architecture studio in Tokyo, the mobile structure, a compact temporary facility of approximately 2,500 square feet, will easily fit into densely built neighborhoods and be transported from city to city.
The first cycle will conclude with a special exhibition presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013, which will explore the ideas and solutions that were addressed at the BMW Guggenheim Lab?s different venues. The two remaining two-year cycles will be announced at a later date.
The theme for the first three-city cycle is Confronting Comfort, an exploration of how urban environments can be made more responsive to people?s needs, how a balance can be found between modern notions of individual versus collective comfort, and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility.

Published 10.05.2011