PressClub Asia · Article.
BMW Guggenheim Lab to launch in New York City on August 3, before Traveling to Berlin and Asia.
Tue May 10 08:36:34 CEST 2011 Press Release
Six-Year Collaboration to Examine Contemporary Urban Issues in Nine Cities Around the World. International Advisory Committee Selects New York BMW Guggenheim Lab Team. Design of First Mobile Laboratory Unveiled.
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Daniel Chan
BMW Group
New York, NY, May 6, 2011 – Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Jim O’Donnell, President and CEO, BMW North America, LLC, announced today that the BMW Guggenheim Lab will launch in New York City from August 3 to October 16. Following New York, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will travel to Berlin in spring/summer 2012, and to a city in Asia to be announced later this year. 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. Launching in New York, the first BMW Guggenheim Lab structure will be a compact temporary facility of approximately 2,500 square feet, located on the border between Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village, at 33 East First Street (between First and Second Avenues). Designed by Atelier Bow-Wow, an architecture studio in Tokyo, the mobile structure 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.
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.
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 roster of programming that will be presented in New York.
The Advisory Committee for the first cycle of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, composed 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 consists 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 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.
The graphic identity of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, which includes an interactive logo created by graphic designers Sulki & Min, from Seoul, South Korea, was unveiled today. Unlike traditional static 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).
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 that allows views inside. A series of smaller wooden structures to be placed in close proximity to the main structure will provide space for the restrooms and a cafe. 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. A video of Atelier Bow-Wow’s architectural rendering of the BMW Guggenheim Lab structure can be viewed at youtube.com/bmwguggenheimlab.
The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a collaboration between BMW AG and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
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About BMW’s Cultural Commitment
In 2011 the BMW Group is celebrating 40 years of international cultural commitment. For 40 years now, the BMW Group has initiated and engaged in more than 100 cultural cooperations worldwide. The company places the main focus of its long-term commitment on modern and contemporary art, jazz and classical music as well as architecture and design. The BMW Group has also been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last six years. In 1972, three large-scale paintings were created by the artist Gerhard Richter specifically for the foyer of the BMW Group's Munich headquarters. Since then, artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Demand and Jeff Koons have co-operated with BMW. The company has also commissioned famous architects such as Karl Schwanzer, Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au to design important corporate buildings and plants. The BMW Group guarantees absolute creative freedom in all the cultural activities it is involved in – as this is just as essential for groundbreaking artistic work as it is for major innovations in a successful business.
The BMW Group
The BMW Group is one of the most successful manufacturers of automobiles and motorcycles in the world with its BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce brands. As a global company, the BMW Group operates 24 production facilities in 13 countries and has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.
During the financial year 2010, the BMW Group sold 1.46 million cars and more than 110,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax for 2010 was euro 4.8 billion on revenues amounting to euro 60.5 billion. At 31 December 2010, the BMW Group had a workforce of approximately 95,500 employees. The success of the BMW Group has always been built on long-term thinking and responsible action.
The company has therefore established ecological and social sustainability throughout the value chain, comprehensive product responsibility and a clear commitment to conserving resources as an integral part of its strategy. As a result of its efforts, the BMW Group has been ranked industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes for the last six years. |
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