Introducing the Guggenheim Lab

WORDS: Nadia Neophytou

It’s one of New York’s most respected art galleries, but some of the Guggenheim magic will soon make its way around the globe as part of a travelling creative think-tank that aims to inspire new ways of looking at the world.

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a dream project for Maria Nicanor, Assistant Curator of Architecture at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and her colleague David van der Leer. “We wanted to create an urban laboratory that would travel around the world and offer programming about the future of cities,” she says.

Led by an international team of emerging voices in architecture, art, design, science, technology and education, the Lab aims to address issues of contemporary urban life through public discourse. “The great thing about this is that it’s a six-year project that will allow us to travel to nine countries around the world,” says Nicanor.

From now until 16 October, the Lab has a home on the busy corner of Houston and Second Avenue in New York’s East Village. It will then move to Berlin and Mumbai, before wrapping up the first phase of the project in 2013.

The second phase will see the Lab travelling to a further six countries, yet to be announced. Two more two-year cycles will follow, each with a new mobile structure and theme, with the whole project wrapping up towards the end of 2016.

It’s foreseeable that an African city will feature on the Lab’s map. “We have a very clear idea that we want to touch different continents around the world,” says Nicanor. “It was important for us to start with America, Europe and Asia, and then move on to other continents. Because we’re doing the research and taking the temperature of how things are working around the world, it’s important that we go to a lot of places.”

Online hub of info

But even if a country isn’t visited by the Lab, there’s still an avenue for people from those countries to be involved.

“An important component is the online aspect to all this,” says Nicanor. “We purposefully didn’t make a publication – there’s no coffee table book for now – because we wanted the website to be a rich archive of what goes on during the whole process.

“As it moves on from NYC, and even in the periods in between travel when there isn’t much happening, the site is the main hub of information. We want it to generate discourse, new ideas, and create new awareness about some of the major issues facing cities today. It’s a lab, so we’re still experimenting to see how it’s all going to work out. Our main goal is to brainstorm and find solutions.”

Nicanor stresses that public participation – both online and in person – is the key. “If you, for example, are sitting at home in Johannesburg, you can send in a question to our urbanology game, and it will come up on the screen in front of the players and be answered.”

After the first three cities, there will an exhibition at the Guggenheim that will offer a conclusion of sorts, born out of the Lab’s creatively fuelled travels.

Watch the video below to find out more and visit www.guggenheim.org to get involved.

Can’t view the video in your browser? Watch it on YouTube.com.