Bayer Pop-up Lab

The pop-up laboratory in Bucharest has been designed by Sane Architecture to attract children and to represent in a symbolic way the science as an interactive process.

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.

Bayer pop-up laboratory — Sane Architecture, Bayer pop-up Lab, Bucharest

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.

Sane Architecture, Bayer pop-up Lab, Bucharest

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.