Mr. Fink calls their place "part theater, part art incubator and part community center".
For Mr. Palanker, the project is part community service, part media relations, part futuristic thinking.
"Seattle Center is a typically eclectic Northwest place," said its director, Robert Nellams, "part park, part cultural center, part community gathering ground".
It was part political salon, part community center, with Florent Morellet and his staff raising money and plotting demonstrations for causes: global, national, local.
It is part alternative media, part community organizer, part youth center and now is immersed in the region's criminal justice system on behalf of the accused and their families.
Called the BMW Guggenheim Lab — it is sponsored by the car company — and opening on Wednesday, it is part think tank, part open-air forum, part community center, all nestled on a vacant sliver of land between two tenements.
In the mid-1990s, the group bought a plot of land on Cross Bay Boulevard, the island's main thoroughfare, with the goal of constructing a new building that would be part firehouse and part community center.
There are several hybrid library-parks (part community centres and part much-needed public spaces), two cable car systems and, most recently, an outdoor escalator running nearly 400m up the troubled slum of Comuna 13.
Anyone who wanted to talk on camera was welcome to do so, becoming involved in a performance that was part community activism and part proto-reality TV, with Mr. Conrad playing his frequent dual role as avant-gardist and man in the street.
The centre is one of a number of "active boxes" that have been built in the area over the last few years, conceived as hubs of 24/7 activity – part community centre, part safe haven, manned by volunteers from the nascent neighbourhood watch initiative.
The site is part informative content and part community and support network.
