Photography: © Atelier Bow-Wow
The BMW Guggenheim Lab, which serves as a think tank and community gathering space, is a mobile laboratory devoted to discussing various issues related to city life. We designed the first lab building using CFRP (carbon-reinforced-plastic). Originally, this building was scheduled to travel from New York to Berlin, and then on to Mumbai. Later, however, it was decided that a second lab building would be constructed in Mumbai using local materials and technologies. Mumbai has a long tradition of erecting mandapa, simple bamboo structures, for weddings and festivals, so we decided to create a lab building belonging to the mandapa structural genealogy. Mandapa are often partially supported by nearby trees and buildings. The event organizers, however, requested that the second lab building be a freestanding structure: they wanted an itinerant space that could be moved to a new ward every week. This would make the Lab accessible to people whose castes ordinarily prohibit them from visiting museums. To achieve these objectives, we designed a structure composed of 2.5-meter-span longitudinal units and 4.5-meter-span truss beam units, all of which fit onto the back of a flatbed truck. We devised joints in which wood connectors were fastened together using rope ties. Some joints also incorporated bolts. To prevent bamboo members from splitting along the grain, we filled them with synthetic resin cement where they were bolted. We wrapped the structure in a rope noren (curtain), to provide transparency and minimize resistance to lateral wind forces, and covered it with a tent roof, to shield visitors from sunlight and bird droppings. The Lab opened just four months after the change of plan. The second lab building seemed to blend in with the local scenery and was readily accepted by the people who used it. This made us feel the great potential of creating architecture using local craftspeople and local materials. (Text by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow)
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