Bayer Pop-up Lab

The task of the project was to design a pop-up laboratory in a park in Bucharest for the German company Bayer and the advertising agency Ogilvy Romania.

The laboratory functioned as a complementary space for the natural science classes and offered the students in the elementary school the opportunity to participate to a series of experiments. A team of Olympic students in chemistry presented and coordinated the experiments.

The architectural concept aimed to attract children and to represent in a symbolic way the science as an interactive process in which everyone can participate creatively to the learning process.

The fifty square meters space, a result of the merge of three transport containers was divided diagonally into four areas, one for reception and one for each division Bayer health, agriculture and high-tech materials. The division panels were plated with acrylic mirror to create the optical illusion of a space that is repeated endlessly like a kaleidoscope. The inside of the lab was plated white MDF panels and covered with mirrored round stickers of different sizes. Each child was offered a sticker for participation and the freedom to paste it randomly in the laboratory.

As the number of children who participated in the experiments increased the space was filled with dots, becoming a room with infinite parallel mirrors – a game of reflections and a symbol of how science extends the horizons of human civilization. The space became a kaleidoscope, an architecture of the infinite possibilities for exploration and progress.

The end result is also an architectural experiment: a statistic of the participation in the project and an interactive installation of parallel worlds involving creatively the participants, arousing curiosity and enthusiasm about the different ways of interpretation of reality.

Bayer Pop-Up Lab, Bucharest, Romania
Architects: Sane Architecture (Traian Bompa, Cristina Chelarescu)
Client: Ogilvy PR & Bayer
Area: 50 sqm
Completion: April 2014