Interview: Curator David Van Der Leer Discusses the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Mumbai

The BMW Guggenheim Lab has already been successful in New York and Berlin over the last year and half, and now it travels to Mumbai from December 9, 2012 through January 20, 2013. The "lab" is a three-part urban think tank, community center, and public gathering space, researching how we live in cities worldwide and how we can improve our relationship with ourselves and within the community. Through events and projects at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, in addition to five satellite locations, they're aiming to make Mumbai their best, most practical project yet.

We spoke with the curator of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, David Van Der Leer, about the goals of the lab in Mumbai and what they've learned from the other cities so far.

Interview: Curator David Van Der Leer Discusses the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Mumbai

"So far we've brought the project to three different cities around the world. We've tried to do it in three different continents. We did the BMW Guggenheim Lab in New York and Berlin, so it made sense to do Asia after that. Bombay or Mumbai is one of the most dense cities in the world. It's changing and growing rapidly, and while it's comparable to other major cities, it's expanding at a much larger scale and at a much faster pace. It's a good place to be if you want to imagine what cities are going to be like in the future."

"It's been an interesting place to collaborate with. They are similar to the Museum of the City of New York. It's a museum very focused on Mumbai and its history but also the contemporary aspects of the city. They do this through crafts very often but also through more social projects. They're based in a beautiful building in a pretty central location in the city. Luckily, they also have a big space outside the museum. Mumbai is such a busy city, and you need quiet places to collect your thoughts and learn. They are one of the few quiet spots in the city."

"The lab is constantly shifting throughout the day. It's a beautiful element of the project, and the different parts depend on the various programs we have. Some days it functions very strongly as a think tank, and other days it's more about social engagement, where people hang out and learn much more in an artistic setting. What's interesting about the lab in Mumbai specifically is that we have the main location at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum and also five other locations around the city. It is quite a feat of planning, I guess.

It's similar to New York in many ways, because here they are very busy-people work very, very long hours and have very little time off to do things before or after work. If people already travel, say, three hours a day, because the city is so big, how can you reach an audience and what do you need to do to make sure that it's not too complicated for the audience to get to you? So with that in mind, and also because we wanted to do research in more specific areas, we decided to break the lab up and have other locations around the city."

"It's always a difficult thing with the lab, because you don't really know what the result will be until it's over. I can better answer the question in late January, but what we're aiming for is a project that is more and more practical in each of the cities we move around to. In New York, the project was heavily focused on public programs, and so is this one in Mumbai. Additionally, we have a series of design and research projects, and those are quite important in this context.

Most of these projects are looking at the city through its relationship between the people and the community. That relationship for the people in Mumbai is changing quite drastically at the moment. We're constantly doing research in terms of what privacy is in the city. What does privacy still mean, and where do you find it? Where do you go in the city, and what are the design implications for that? I think these are interesting questions for the people in Mumbai, because I don't think the urban conversations here are focused on the topic of privacy.

For people outside of Mumbai, I think we're learning a lot from being in another place. People are learning about the relationship between the individual and the community here, and we can apply these lessons to other cities in order to improve the quality of life everywhere."

"In every city that we complete the lab in, we have learned more about our own project, and that's the reason our projects are constantly evolving. One thing we learn from each previous city is how we can get more specific and more practical, both for the labs and in our approach to urbanity worldwide. For that reason, we are doing research and design projects specific to Mumbai. The other thing I have been thinking about for quite awhile is what would it mean if the lab wasn't only in one place. Mumbai is the perfect location to test this out, in terms of the various locations around the city. We'll see if it will be a helpful setup for the lab in the future."