The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile laboratory that will travel to nine major cities worldwide over six years. Led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in the areas of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will address issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse. Its goal is the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately the creation of forward-thinking solutions for urban life.

Over the six-year migration of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, there will be three distinct mobile structures and thematic cycles. Each structure will be designed by a different architect, and each will travel to three cities around the globe.

The theme of the first two-year cycle of the BMW Guggenheim Lab is Confronting Comfort, exploring notions of individual and collective comfort and the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility. Cycle 1 of the BMW Guggenheim Lab launches in New York City from August 3 to October 16, 2011, before traveling to Berlin and a city in Asia, to be announced later this year. Cycle 1 concludes with an exhibition presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013. Two additional two-year cycles will follow, each with a new mobile structure and theme, concluding in the fall of 2016.

Part urban think tank, part community center and public gathering space, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is conceived to engage public discourse in cities around the world and through the BMW Guggenheim Lab website and online social communities.