NEXT Who’s Next
called BMW Guggenheim Labs,
created with collaborator Maria
Nicanor. Led by two curators
from the Guggenheim, each
5,000-foot lab is a mashup of
think tank, community center,
and gallery space. It will be
staffed by a multidisciplinary
team of researchers and emerging talents from architecture
and economics, as well as other
scientists charged with finding
ways in which cities can become
more comfortable, economical,
and sustainable. Three different
concepts will hit a total of nine
cities across Asia, Europe, and
North America. Between travels, each lab will send its
research back to the Guggenheim for an exhibit.
Background: After focusing
on urban and architectural
theory in graduate school, van
der Leer worked in publishing
for two years, spent a few
months biking around New
Zealand, did a stint with Rem
Koolhaas at OMA, and moved
to New York to work with
award-winning architect Steven
Holl in 2006. He joined the
Guggenheim in October 2008.
City Mouse in the burbs:
“I grew up in Rotterdam’s suburbs, but I was always interested
in urban issues. My thesis topic
was urban photography. I was
frustrated by artists’ photos in
my course books: They were
about beauty, not urban theory.”
do not always need to be pretty or
beautiful; they can also be ugly
and dirty. But more poetic is an
important alternative to how we
have been looking at cities.”
What’s in a name: Van der
Leer arrived at the Guggenheim
as assistant curator of architecture and design but successfully
lobbied last December for a title
change to assistant curator of
architecture and urban studies.
“Urban studies is not very common among museum curators,
but I do feel we are at a turning
point. We’re starting to pay
more attention to this topic.”
On jet-pack proposals: “It
is important that all of the
BMW Guggenheim Labs’ ideas
come with a sense of reality. We
are not looking for utopian
proposals here; we all know that
most of those never materialize.”
Up close with an icon:
Before the Guggenheim, van
der Leer worked one-on-one
with Steven Holl, famous for his
Linked Hybrid building project
in Beijing. “I learned how Steven’s brain worked. He’s a very
sensitive personality, so it was
quite beautiful.”
New York vs. Europe: “I came
thinking European cities were
more pleasant, but I’ve changed
my mind. Here, you’re always on
the sidewalk or the train and you
see people. In Holland, you’re on
a bike and in your own space;
that has social implications.”
Favorite city outside of
New York: Tokyo. “It has a
combination of low-rise residential urban villages and high-rise
energy. And great food.”
Meaning in the metrics:
Van der Leer wants to launch a
series of projects that add expressionist elements to the recent
mania for viewing cities through
the lens of data. “These projects
Discomfort zone: The first
lab, built by the hip Japanese
design firm Atelier Bow Wow,
will explore the idea of “
Confronting Comfort: The City and
You.” Van der Leer concedes
that comfort in a city is a
slightly controversial topic.
What Westerners consider
indispensable may well pass as
luxury in other parts of the
world, he says.
Favorite book: Rebecca
Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History
of Walking. Solnit will write
one of the “Sole/Soul Sermons”
the Guggenheim is doing this
spring with the San Francisco
art collective FutureFarmers.
“It explores the relationship
between the soul and the sole,
beginning in a shoemaker’s
workshop at the museum, then
venturing out into the streets.
Transcripts of the sermons
will be printed with ink made
from sidewalk soot,” says van
der Leer.
Why the Dutch are so
creative: “Designers in Holland had a very generous subsidy
system. But as the politics get
more right wing, that’s changing. The creative scene is shifting
to Belgium.”
Ann Stratton/Getty Images (noodle bowl); Mark Heithoff (Holl); Patrick Batchelder/Alamy
(Guggenheim); Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis (bike); Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N. Y. (painting)
Van Gogh or Vermeer?
“Vermeer, for the skies.”
