BMW Guggenheim Lab: A Museum's Downtown Experiment Explores Urban Life
AUGUST 12, 2011
Equal parts urban think tank, community center and cool indoor-outdoor gathering space, the temporary BMW Guggenheim Lab on Houston Street gets people thinking about the cities they call home.
With plans to travel to nine major cities worldwide over six years, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile “laboratory” led by international interdisciplinary teams of emerging talent in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability. A joint venture from the Guggenheim Museum and BMW, the lab’s mission is to address issues of contemporary urban life through programs that incorporate public discourse and the exploration of new ideas. Addressing issues of urban life and the livability of cities as well as how people in them interact, the BGL program includes film screenings, lectures, discussions and additional events.
The New York City Lab occupies the former site of statuary Irreplaceable Artifacts (The property now belongs to the New York City Parks Department) on Houston Street at Second Avenue. Lightweight and compact, with a structural skeleton built of carbon fiber, the mobile structure was designed by the Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow as a “traveling toolbox.” The Lab Cafe, catered by popular Bushwick restaurant Roberta’s, gives visitors a place to gather and graze under an open-air tent and watch the city careen by. There’s virtual space too: The BMW Guggenheim Lab website and social communities allow participants around the world to engage in the ideas and experiments generated by the BGL team.
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