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 stagelike atmosphere will change often throughout the run of the BMW Guggenheim Lab and will draw its energy from the programs developed by the Lab 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: a formal lecture setting with a stage might become the scene for a celebratory gathering or a workshop with tables for hands-on experiments.

A series of smaller wooden shelters to be placed in close proximity to the main structure will provide space for restrooms and a cafe. Whereas the main BMW Guggenheim Lab 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 shelters and the main BMW Guggenheim Lab structure will form a temporary twenty-first-century ensemble that in each city will frame a particular urban void.

About Atelier Bow-Wow
Atelier Bow-Wow was established in Tokyo in 1992 by the husband-and-wife team of Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima. Best known for its surprising, idiosyncratic, yet highly usable residential projects in dense urban environments, the firm has developed its practice based on a profound and unprejudiced study of existing cultural, economic, and environmental conditions—a study that led it to propose the term “pet architecture” for the multitude of odd, ungainly, but functional little buildings wedged into tiny sites around Tokyo. Atelier Bow-Wow has also acquired an enthusiastic following through its Micro Public Space projects and its innovative projects at exhibitions such as the 2010 Venice Biennale (as an official representative of Japan) and the São Paulo Bienal, as well as at venues such as the Hayward in London, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, The Gallery at REDCAT in Los Angeles, the Japan Society in New York, and the OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich in Linz, Austria.