BMW Guggenheim Lab - a mobile facility for lectures, round tables, workshops - was designed by Atelier Bow-Wow for the Guggenheim Foundation and BMW in 2011. Since then, the "laboratory" has managed to visit New York, Berlin and Mumbai, where educating the townspeople engaged in architects, designers, urbanists, etc.
The "Berlin" glossary (
download it here) is related to the program of events that took place during the stay of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in the German capital (June 15 - July 29, 2012): each concept refers to one or another event. Therefore, the range of these terms is extremely wide. There is even an Arduino, a hardware computing platform that is affordable and even allows you to do robotics: it was also told about the public in terms of possible "interventions" in the urban environment. The proposed use of a 3D printer is similar.
But overall, the glossary does not offer anything new. Thus, a significant part of the 100 concepts is devoted to bottom-up initiatives, self-government and activism of all kinds: crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, “new architect” (that is, initiating socially significant projects), Do-It-Yourself (“do it yourself”), trust as an alternative control, digital democracy …
No less space is devoted to eco-topics - from climate change, emission reduction and "Reduce, reuse, recycle" (reduction, reuse recycling) to "sustainable" tourism (that is, socially responsible, useful for the city on a scale of residents and neighborhoods) and Upcycling (recycling of used materials into something equal to or greater than their original value).
The topics of transport (from bicycles and joint ownership of them to “future parking”), public space, and aging of the population were not ignored. Also presented are the "subjective" concepts of "beauty" and "ugliness" of the city, considered the psychological terms "emotional perception" and "emotional connections", which should be stimulated by a thoughtful urban environment. Also not forgotten is “body language,” an important research tool for urban psychologists.
The BMW Guggenheim Lab glossary summarizes the themes and concepts of "popular" urbanism, which is quite consistent with its explicit orientation towards non-specialists. Given the current fashion for urban themes, he is quite capable of becoming a kind of "primer" for the general public.
N. F.
