Art Meets Autobahn
BMW and the Guggenheim Museum have teamed up on, appropriately enough, a mobile museum. Known as the BMW Guggenheim Lab, the pavilion opening today in First Park in the East Village was designed by Tokyo architecture studio Atelier Bow-Wow and will host public workshops, lectures, and film screenings on the topic of creating comfort zones in an urban environment. This is the first of three planned versions of the lab, which will travel to a combined total of nine major cities over six years. “Confronting Comfort” departs here in spring 2012 for Berlin before continuing on to Mumbai (33 E. 1st St., nr. First Ave.; Wed-Th, 1–9 p.m.; Fri, 1–10 p.m.; Sa-Su, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.; closed M and Tu; free; through October 16).
Windows on the Design World
Barneys New York opened its designer showcase “Roomscapes of the Imagination” in windows along Madison Avenue last weekend, and the results show four radically different interpretations of space. Two of the designers, Rafael de Cárdenas and Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, chose to evoke films that are about as different as different can be: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, about a fashion designer and set mostly in her bedroom, and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes, about an entomologist trapped in a sand pit. Architects from Shelton, Mindel & Associates and artist Joe Grillo, meanwhile, are each contemplating the future, the former meditating on infinity, the latter on the sensory overload of American futurism (660 Madison Ave., nr. 61st St.; 212-826-8900; through Aug. 8).
Make Your Own Tiny Biosphere
Twig Terrariums are quite exactly what they sound like: miniature natural dioramas, created with moss, small stones, and of course twigs, in antique glass vessels. The tiny pastoral scenes and mini-dramas they contain are dreamed up by friends Michelle Inciarrano and Katy Maslow, who, starting this Saturday, will be the Museum of Arts and Design’s featured studio artists, doing weekly demonstrations on the art of constructing micro-worlds. The programs are free with museum admission, but if you wind up inspired, the DIY kits available on their website start at $25 (2 Columbus Circle, nr. Eighth Ave.; 212-299-7777; 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; madmuseum.org; Saturdays through 8/27).
Crashing the Glass House
This Monday, Cooper-Hewitt is putting on a free youth program for aspiring designers called Architectural Design. It will give preregistered high-school students an inside look at one of the region’s architectural masterpieces, the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut (meet at Cooper-Hewitt Museum, 2 E. 91st St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-849-8400; 9:30 a.m.–2:45 p.m.; cooperhewitt.org).