BMW Guggenheim Lab, 33 East First Street, New York City, until 16 October
LIKE an increasing number of Londoners, I cycle to work every day through hectic traffic, navigating busy roads and passing huge cement trucks, heavy goods vehicles and darting pedestrians. In two years I have seen two cyclists crushed. So, why take my life in my handlebars? It is about comfort: I can鈥檛 stand the tube, the bus is too crowded and it takes too long to walk.
This is precisely the kind of thought process that journalist and self-described 鈥渦rban experimentalist鈥� Charles Montgomery wants to study. As part of a new initiative from the Guggenheim Foundation he is roping in New Yorkers as lab rats. Montgomery is one of four people hosting the New York installation of the , a temporary pop-up building filled with artworks and interactive displays. The brainchild of Maria Nicanor and David van der Leer, curators at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, the lab will be packed up at the end of its stint in the Big Apple and taken on an international tour, to Berlin and an as-yet-unnamed city in Asia. Another two travelling labs are planned for the six-year project.
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The theme for this first cycle is 鈥渃onfronting comfort鈥�. Teaming up with psychologist , from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Montgomery aims to 鈥渕ap out the emotional landscape of public space鈥�.
To do so, visitors will be asked, among other things, to indicate their emotional state by choosing a representative image of a mannequin鈥檚 facial expression or body language. Investigators will also use hardware to measure participants鈥� physiological responses to street stimuli. Montgomery hopes to come away with meaningful insights 鈥� and data 鈥� to answer questions about the way the urban environment influences its inhabitants. 鈥淒o we feel better walking along blank walls or shop fronts?鈥� he asks. 鈥淗ow many trees does it take to dull the emotional effect of car-filled streets?鈥�
Conceived to be 鈥渁n incubator of ideas that can empower people鈥�, Nicanor says, the labs will involve local organisations in the various cities it visits. (This community feel may seem somewhat discordant with the corporate branding from BMW, but Nicanor insists that after several years of discussion there is a 鈥渃ommon understanding鈥� of the project鈥檚 vision.) In New York City, local green activist Omar Freilla will be another of the lab鈥檚 hosts, dedicating his efforts to grass-roots community involvement and sustainability.
As the international nature of the project indicates, organisers also hope to use local issues as a mirror for global problems. , a Nigerian inventor who works on water systems, will use his time at the lab to examine the interaction between consumption and waste in New York by contrasting the city鈥檚 sewer infrastructure with that of Lagos. He sees his research as an example of a wider principle of urban life: the city influences us, but it鈥檚 what we do that shapes the city: 鈥淓veryday actions are what make the system function properly.鈥� He pauses. 鈥淥r not.鈥�