{"id":385,"date":"2011-08-06T19:12:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T01:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=385"},"modified":"2013-01-28T07:17:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T14:17:56","slug":"icons-pop-ups-and-corporate-branding-of-urban-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=385","title":{"rendered":"Icons, Pop-Ups, and Corporate Branding of Urban Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation\u2014widely known for creating iconic buildings to house its museums, including Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s classic spiraled ribbon<\/a> on Fifth Avenue in New York City and Frank Gehry\u2019s twisted curves<\/a> in Bilbao, Spain\u2014joined the \u201cPop-Up Urbanism” movement.\u00a0 Pop-Up Urbanism<\/a> (aka Tactical<\/a> or Temporary<\/a> urbanism) refers to projects that reclaim vacant or unsightly urban space for active, but temporary, use. \u00a0Pop-Up projects provide low-cost amenities that improve neighborhood life and\/or function to test concepts before making big financial commitments to develop them.\u00a0 They include sanctioned initiatives like cafes<\/a>, markets<\/a>, playgrounds<\/a> and parks<\/a>, unsanctioned ones like \u201cguerrilla gardens<\/a>\u201d, and quasi-sanctioned ones like urban forests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With sponsorship from Bavarian Motor Works, the BMW Guggenheim Lab<\/a> is a two-story black carbon fiber and mesh structure open at both ends that sits in a narrow 2000 square foot space separating two tenements at Houston Street and Second\u00a0Avenue in the East Village.\u00a0 \u00a0Designed by the Tokyo architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow<\/a>, the structure\u00a0will serve as a combination think tank\/community center capable of<\/p>\n

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BMW-Guggenheim Lab, New York City (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Paul Warcol)<\/p><\/div>\n

accommodating up to 300 people.\u00a0 The Lab will host a variety of programs (lectures, workshops, film screenings, and other performances) organized around the theme of \u201cConfronting Comfort\u201d in the context of urban environmental and social responsibility.\u00a0 Two other labs designed by different architects will follow, and will address other specific themes. \u00a0All three labs will travel to nine cities around the world over the next six years.<\/p>\n

Sarah Goodyear<\/a>, writing for the website Grist<\/a>, attended the opening program held on August 4.\u00a0 She\u2019s keeping an open mind that conversations at the Lab will produce concrete action that improves urban life instead of \u201cjust a lot of academic theorizing in a beautiful corporate-sponsored space.\u201d \u00a0That’s always a reasonable worry.\u00a0 A commenter on her Grist piece turns rather more cynical, however:<\/p>\n

Hmm… let’s see now: Huge corporations making tons of money, paying low or now <\/em>[sic] taxes, and partly tax-funded arts institutions threatened everywhere, BUT a big one “partners” with a manufacturer of elite vehicles for private urban transportation\u2026 and Grist mentions none of this.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether there is editorial control or not, it does not really matter because branding is all, and keeping people driving personal cars in cities is the priority for BMW, and looks like a lot of normally clever people are falling for it\u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alternatively, we might consider Rebecca Choi\u2019s<\/a> analysis of another corporate-sponsored temporary structure that, from 1995-2000, filled an empty space near Potsdamer Platz after the demolition of the Berlin Wall. \u00a0Choi argues that the Info Box<\/a>\u2014although \u201ctethered to corporate development\u201d and criticized by some as a \u201cmarketing tool intended to benefit big new investors in the area such as Daimler-Benz and Sony Corporation\u201d\u2014helped to not only guide development but \u201cengaged the public in an important healing process.\u201d \u00a0This healing process was required by the emotional<\/p>\n

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Info Box, Berlin (by Christian Pohlert)<\/p><\/div>\n

association of the building site with \u201cbroken livelihoods and severed connections.\u201d \u00a0The structure \u00a0contained a number of exhibition spaces that educated the public about Berlin\u2019s redevelopment plans.\u00a0 From a roof-top terrace the Box allowed people to view rebuilding efforts in Potsdamer Platz.\u00a0 In so doing it provided an interactive forum for people to discuss the urban landscape and a \u201cresponsive, participatory environment that communicated a message of progress and hope.\u201c Choi nicely contrasts this urban intervention to the lack of any such physical (architectural) intervention at New York\u2019s Ground Zero after 9\/11, where \u201ca sense of emptiness remained as reconstruction efforts lagged.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems to me that the piece of pop-up architecture at Houston Street and Second Avenue\u2014corporate-sponsored or not\u2014has a fighting chance of accomplishing some of the same redemptive goals.\u00a0 Actually, I think there\u2019s very little downside to any<\/em> experiment that seeks to promote more and better civic conversation given the problems facing today\u2019s cities.\u00a0 The BMW-Guggenheim project also prompts me to wonder whether, and how, more formal approaches to urban design\u2014i.e., the various competing \u201curbanisms\u201d that we\u2019ve written about on this blog\u2014might hardwire into their final plans more accommodations for the experimental use of space so that cities might better respond to the changing needs of their people and cultures. \u00a0As many urban observers and historians have suggested, cities work best when allowed to develop incrementally. That\u2019s a concern that overlaps with the territory of Everyday Urbanism<\/a>, and will be the subject of another post.<\/p>\n

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BMW Guggenheim Lab Lot (Guggenheim Museum)<\/p><\/div>\n

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This week the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation\u2014widely known for creating iconic buildings to house its museums, including Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s classic spiraled ribbon on Fifth Avenue in New York City and Frank Gehry\u2019s twisted curves in Bilbao, Spain\u2014joined the \u201cPop-Up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-placemaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-6d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2470,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/2470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}