By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
LOWER EAST SIDE — The Bowery will transform into an urban exhibition space and interactive art workshop as part of the New Museum's "Festival of Ideas for the New City" kicking off in May.
The ambitious program, running May 4-8, brings together dozens of downtown organizations using different mediums as a way to imagine the city's future, organizers explained at a preview Thursday.
New Museum officials gave a sneak peek of all the event's programming, including a one-day street fest that will overtake the Bowery between Houston and Spring streets, as well as a block of Stanton and Rivington streets, with inflatable structures, street furniture and a series of tent structures snaking along the street.
"You're going to be able to walk the Bowery in a way you never have before, folks," said Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club, one of the festival's partners. "This is not a street fair for tube socks and sandwiches."
More than 75 local organizations, small businesses and nonprofit groups will participate in the street fest, which will also include cooking demonstrations, rooftop gardening classes, oral history projects and bike tours.
A central part of the daylong event will be colorful tents set up along the Bowery, after organizers hosted a competition for design teams to re-envision the outdoor tent by creating eco-friendly structures that provide shelter as well adding a playful element to the streetscape
The winning design, "The Worms," features various accordion-like sections 10 feet high and 20 feet long that connect to form flexible nylon tunnels along the street.
Other programs include a series of murals covering roll-down security gates along Bowery storefronts, art and poetry in various languages projected onto buildings in the area, and all manner of creatively re-purposed objects — from a "truck farm" to a FEMA trailer converted into a solar-powered art studio.
Projects will also pop up beyond the Bowery, with participants in the festival stretching from 10th Street down to Canal Street, from Sixth Avenue to the East River.
The festival's conference portion features a keynote speech by architect Rem Koolhaas and panelists ranging philosophers and city planners to American and foreign mayors.
Nearly all the events are free and open to the public, and an interactive website for the festival will allow visitors to easily navigate the terrain.
