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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 easy 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.
An international Advisory
Committee has nominated the New York BMW Guggenheim Lab Team (BGL
Team), an innovative group of emerging talents in their fields
who will create the diverse range of programming that will be
presented in New York.
The BMW Guggenheim Lab is curated
by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban
Studies, and Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator, Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum.
The Advisory Committee for the
first cycle of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, an international group of
experts from various disciplines, includes Daniel Barenboim
(Conductor and Pianist, Argentina), Elizabeth Diller (Designer,
USA), Nicholas Humphrey (Theoretical Psychologist, UK),
Muchadeyi Ashton Masunda (Mayor of Harare, Zimbabwe), Enrique
Peñalosa (Former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia), Juliet Schor
(Economist and Professor of Sociology, USA), Rirkrit Tiravanija
(Artist, Thailand), and Wang Shi (Entrepreneur, China). The
Advisory Committee is charged with nominating candidates for the
BGL Team for each of the three cities of the first cycle, as
well as providing their own ideas relating to the theme and
consulting with members of the BGL Team.
The New York BGL Team is comprised
of Omar Freilla, a Bronx, New York–based environmental justice
activist, cooperative developer, and founder and coordinator of
Green Worker Cooperatives; Canadian journalist and urban
experimentalist Charles Montgomery, an advocate for
sustainability and well-being; Nigerian microbiologist and
inventor and 2010 TEDGlobal Fellow Olatunbosun Obayomi; and
architects and urbanists Elma van Boxel and Kristian Koreman of
the Rotterdam-based architecture studio ZUS [Zones Urbaines
Sensibles]. Video interviews with each of the BGL Team members
can be viewed at youtube.com/bmwguggenheimlab.
The graphic identity of the BMW
Guggenheim Lab includes an interactive logo created by graphic
designers Sulki & Min, from Seoul, South Korea, was unveiled
today. Unlike traditional logos, Sulki & Min’s design will grow
and change through audience interaction on bmwguggenheimlab.org
over the course of the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s first two-year
cycle. Reflecting the role of the BMW Guggenheim Lab as a space
for the exchange of ideas, the logo will become the metaphorical
and virtual representation of worldwide interaction with the
theme of Confronting Comfort and the larger discourse about
cities and urban life. The online dialogue will be extended
through dedicated BMW Guggenheim Lab social media channels,
including Twitter (twitter.com/bmwgugglab), Facebook (facebook.com/bmwguggenheimlab),
YouTube (youtube.com/bmwguggenheimlab), Flickr (flickr.com/bmwguggenheimlab),
and FourSquare (foursquare.com/bmwgugglab).
New York BMW Guggenheim Lab
The inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab,
located at 33 East First Street (between First and Second
Avenues), will be open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 1 to 9 pm,
Fridays, 1 to 10 pm, and Saturdays and Sundays, 10 am to 10 pm.
The BGL Team will design public
programs, experiments, and an installation exploring how
interventions and innovations that decentralize, decelerate,
localize, and democratize New Yorkers can reinvent the urban
experience, creating a more adaptable and sustainable version of
comfort. The BMW Guggenheim Lab is conceived to spark visitor
curiosity and interaction, and audiences will be encouraged to
participate and contribute to the answers, ideas, and stories
generated inside. Programming will include unconventional tours
exploring the urban fabric, hands-on experiments and how-to
workshops, film screenings, and community-based discussions.
Each BGL Team member will also
work closely with collaborators such as AgeLab, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT); Environmental Psychology, The
Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY); Latin Lab,
School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia
University; Poiesis Fellowship, Institute for Public Knowledge,
New York University; and THNK, the Amsterdam School of Creative
Leadership. These local and international collaborators will
share their expertise and contribute their knowledge to enrich
the ideas and proposals of the BGL Team.
The Architecture
With a structural skeleton built
of carbon fiber, the lightweight and compact BMW Guggenheim Lab
has been designed by Atelier Bow-Wow as a “traveling toolbox.”
The lower half of the structure, a present-day version of the
Mediterranean loggia, will be left open at most times. Its
configuration will change periodically throughout the run of the
BMW Guggenheim Lab to meet the needs of particular programs
developed by the BGL Team. The cross-pollination and user
interaction that will be an integral part of the BMW Guggenheim
Lab’s programs find their counterpart in the upper part of the
structure, which houses a flexible rigging system and is wrapped
in a semitransparent mesh. Through this external skin, visitors
will be able to catch glimpses of the extensive apparatus of
tools that will be lowered or raised from the fully enclosed
toolbox canopy according to the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s manifold
programming needs. The ground space can shift from a formal
lecture setting with a stage, to the scene for celebratory
gatherings or for workshops with tables for hands-on
experiments. A video of Atelier Bow-Wow’s architectural
rendering of the BMW Guggenheim Lab structure can be viewed at
youtube.com/bmwguggenheimlab.
A series of smaller wooden
structures to be placed in close proximity to the main BMW
Guggenheim Lab structure will provide space for restrooms and a
cafe. Whereas the main structure is forward-looking in its
materiality and highly urban in its programmatic approach, the
design of the restrooms and cafe references timeless timber
construction that has been used in many settings, both rural and
urban. Together, the wooden structures and the main BMW
Guggenheim Lab form a temporary twenty-first-century ensemble
that in each city will frame a particular urban void. After the
BMW Guggenheim Lab departs for Berlin, the improvements made to
the currently vacant lot in New York City will remain, allowing
a formerly unusable city space to become an accessible public
park.
Photos: BMW
(May 06, 2011)
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