NEW YORK, NY.- The BMW Guggenheim Lab launches its worldwide tour today with the opening of its first mobile structure in Manhattan's East Village. This public space—part urban think tank, part gathering space, part community center—offers free programs and events for visitors to explore the challenges and opportunities of today's cities. The BMW Guggenheim Lab addresses issues of contemporary urban life through programs designed to spark curiosity and interaction, encouraging visitors to participate in the Lab's research by generating questions, answers, ideas, and dialogue.

Over the next six years, the BMW Guggenheim Lab will go through three successive cycles, each with its own theme and specially designed mobile structure. The first cycle includes New York, Berlin, and a city in Asia, and will culminate in a special exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013.

The inaugural Lab, located at First Park, Houston at 2nd Avenue, a New York City Parks property, is open free of charge Wednesdays to Sundays, from August 3 through October 16. In addition to the Lab structure itself, the site features a 42-seat cafe, operated by the Brooklyn-based restaurant Roberta's. Over the run of the lab, more than 100 programs will address the theme for the BMW Guggenheim Lab's first cycle, Confronting Comfort, exploring how urban environments can be made more responsive to people's needs, how a balance can be found between notions of individual versus collective comfort, and how the urgent need for environmental and social responsibility can be met. Programs include Urbanology, a large-scale interactive group game that can be played both on-site and online, as well as workshops, experiments, discussions, screenings, and off-site tours. All programs are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-serve basis. For the full programming schedule, which will be updated regularly, please visit the BMW Guggenheim Lab website.

The Lab website and blog offer a global audience a variety of ways to participate in this multidisciplinary urban project. The blog will discuss activities at the BMW Guggenheim Lab, and will also feature posts by notable guest writers and interviews with the BMW Guggenheim Lab's collaborators.