The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a public space for the exploration of ideas related to urban life—through interactive installations, site-specific events, workshops, discussions, performances, and informal gatherings. Housed in a mobile structure designed by the Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow, the Lab launches in First Park, a New York City Parks property at Houston Street and Second Avenue, from August 3 to October 16, before continuing on to other cities around the world. The New York Lab Team—comprising an urban activist, an inventor, a journalist, and two architects—will lead the investigation into innovative concepts and designs for city life, inspired by the theme Confronting Comfort. The Lab will travel to nine cities around the world over the next six years, in three successive cycles, each with its own mobile structure and theme.

Urbanology is a large group game that will take place in the BMW Guggenheim Lab and online, throughout the Lab’s New York run, to address issues that arise when cities grow and inhabitants try to institute lasting change. In this unusual interactive installation, visitors role-play scenarios for city transformation and become advocates for issues such as education, housing, health care, infrastructure, and mobility as they build a city that matches their specific needs. (Experience design: Local Projects / 3-D design: ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles].)

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