Boston - Institute of Contemporary Art

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Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, MA

Architect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/E_Facade%20copySS.jpg/
East Facade View

http://www.icaboston.org/Home (http://www.icaboston.org/Home)

Opening: December 10, 2006
65,000 sf


Project Design PartnersAssociate Architects: Perry Dean Rogers | Partners, BostonContractor: Macomber Builders, BostonProject Manager: SkanskaEngineering Consultants: Arup New York, Fisher Dachs Associates, Jaffe Holden AssociatesDiller Scofidio + Renfro's dramatic cantilever design integrates the public harborwalk into the building and produces shifting views of the waterfront throughout the museum, which includes 17,000 square feet of exhibition space; a 325-seat performing arts theater; a media center; educational facilities; and a bookstore and restaurant.

Boston's 43-mile HarborWalk is a primary architectural element and design inspiration that defines and animates the public spaces of the http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/System/Icons/1x1_clear.gif new ICA. Bordering the north and west sides of the building, the HarborWalk intersects and envelops the museum and appears to fold up from the ground into a grandstand of public seating.

The galleries, located on the uppermost level, dramatically cantilever over the city's public harborwalk toward the water, providing a sheltered open space at ground level where visitors can gather to enjoy views of the Boston Harbor. The exterior of the "gallery box," clad in translucent glass planks, will be illuminated at night to become a radiant, welcoming waterfront presence.

Inside the museum, the harbor view is transformed into a theatrical backdrop for the theater's stage, whose glass walls can be adjusted for light--from transparent to filtered to opaque--to meet particular performance needs. http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/System/Icons/1x1_clear.gif Completion of the museum, which will be Diller + Scofidio's first major new building project in the United States, is projected for 2006. A $62 million capital campaign is underway to support building and endowing the facility.

"Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio's intelligent and sensitive design provides just the right combination of edgy and elegant to accommodate our growing exhibition and programming needs, as well as our plans to establish a permanent collection," says Jill Medvedow, James Sachs Plaut Director of the ICA.

"Their progressive architectural statement, together with a one-of-a-kind waterfront location, will attract residents and visitors worldwide to benefit the City of Boston and expand ways of looking at and understanding the art and architecture of our time."

Southwest View:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/SouthwestSS.jpg/

Northwest View:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/NorthwestSS2.jpg/

HarborWalk at Night:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/Harborwalk_night%20copySS2.jpg/

Media Center:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/Mediatheque%20copySS2.jpg/

Galleries:

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Theater:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/Theater%20copySS2.jpg/

Lobby:

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/LobbySS2.jpg/

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INSIDE PREVIEW: THE NEW INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART

bigredandshiny.com (http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?section=article&issue=issue46&article=THE_INSTITUTE_OF_79532)
by JAMES HULL (http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/archive.pl?&action=search&issue=issue46&input=JAMES HULL)

At first after putting on a hard hat, we walked across a drawbridge of perforated metal flooring and into the new Institute of Contemporary Art (http://www.icaboston.org/Home). I did feel like we entered the building through the left hip pocket instead of the proper front - the water side, but that probably makes more sense than walking halfway around the building to get in every time. The entryway passes under the back edge of the step-like theater floor and then into the more open central reception area which is very interesting visually.

First impression: WOW! The openness of the space and the ability to see across the first floor and out to the water was framed by the central elevator atrium beautifully. After blocking out the echoing classic rock (Allman Brothers, Sweet Melissa...at top volume) the thrill of seeing something this elaborate and specific in its focus on presenting art in Boston was overwhelming. Can this be real? The pull of the water and the light from it energize the entire lobby space. A glass elevator will lift visitors up the center of the whole space - which should keep this floor plan easy to navigate.

But as a curator and veteran museum installer, I was impatient to see the real deal: The two 8,200 square foot galleries on the fourth floor. I hurried past the Store and the two story Learning Lab without using my camera (because I was there to see where I would be helping install - not to take pictures...). I did examine the art loading dock, “prep” area and workroom which were really were nice - no more squeezing stuff past a huge staircase just to get art in the building!

View of the ICA theater, which will seat 325 (6/15/2006):

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The West side of the first two floors are dominated by the sloping floor and high ceilings and the view down the theater space and out through the glass into the harbor is simply breathtaking. We walked up one level and into the to the open glass stage and seating of the 325 seat theater space. The continuation of the interior space all the way down the exterior steps to the water beyond the stage creates a very open feel unexpected in a backstage area. I imagine much of this view will be closed off for lighting and so that the performances not to be upstaged by the harbor view behind them.

The stairway and railings are sculptural: graphic folded steel plates make up the handrail and the open central shaft creates a vertical space that feels like a James Turrell installation. Up another level is the Cafe and, the theater support area.

This space was luxurious: five green rooms, three bathrooms and an open floor plan that made the administrative floor I visited next seem small by comparison - which is too bad because it was where all the offices and library were located. Handsome outside offices had sliding doors (doors were in short supply at the old ICA building) and windows with the end wall spanned by the just plain sexy all-glass conference room.

The super cool, media center - the wedge-shaped protrusion below the ICA’s distinctive 80 foot cantilevered top floor really shows what happens when you allow talented architects to do what they want: space is transformed. Water fills the front edge of the room’s view and the sensation of hanging is palpable. The steps and desks are laid out like a medium sized lecture hall (where Boston Harbor is teaching the class). You enter this space from the central elevator lobby which offers a long view of the interior and sits along side the two story theater.

Water view of the Media lab from outside (6/15/2006):

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Finally we entered the cavernous West gallery where interior walls for the “Super Vision” exhibit were already being framed out. The space was big and really beautifully proportioned, great usable height of over 14 feet that did not dwarf the occupant (or feel oddly tall like the Rose expansion). The space was a great rectangular layout that just felt good to be in. The amazing saw-tooth roof let in natural Northern light and also had uplights bouncing off of the ribs that ran across the shorter dimension of the space.

View from the rear of West gallery (6/15/2006):

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The scrim panels were not in place at the time so the structure was revealed more than it will be during exhibitions. The grid on the ceiling will hold large rectangular cloth panels to diffuse the natural light even more. The combination of natural and artificial light reminded me of a high tech version of the DIA Beacon roof, which creates the nicest light I have ever seen in a museum.

Connecting the West and East galleries is the “long gallery” that extends along the picture window across the water side of the third floor ( this is the area that gets the party planner rental income!) While it may not be suited for actually exhibiting art, it reminds you where you are and feels like a combination of a sheltered courtyard and an open roof deck.

In the East gallery a contractor was polishing the handsome light gray concrete floors that the ICA wished it had at the old space ( they painted plywood and cement floor boards gray in the old days). Integrated electrical access and attachment points for walls are built flush into the floors. This space is where the ICA Prize finalist will exhibit and the area that will host the permanent collection.

The outside amphitheater is already the choice lunch spot for the contractors and is warmed up by the inventive wooden surface of the overhang which feels like a continuation of the wide wooden deck and Harbor Walk. This area will truly be the best reason to walk the handsome new Harbor walk from either the North End, South End or Fort Point Channel. I did think that it was funny that if you climb the stairs there was no entrance to the museum anywhere - only the emergency escapes lead there from inside. But that was a small problem easily tempered by the reward the viewpoint offered. The steps create a vital missing attraction in the area; final an area designed for the public to enjoy a wind sheltered view of the water without owning a luxury condominium! This area reminds me of those great steps where everyone hangs out and meets up at PS1 in Queens, New York - but with a much better view.

Congratulations to everyone at the ICA, Macomber, Skanska and Diller Scofidio + Renfro! Take your time finishing this building right, we have waited 100 years for a great new art museum in Boston, we can wait a few weeks longer.

All images are courtesy of the James Hull and the ICA.

See more images (http://www.greenstreetgallery.org/bigred.ica.html) from inside the ICA.

James Hull is a artist, independant curator, preparator. He is the founding director of Green Street Gallery and a regular contributor to Big, Red & Shiny.

All content © copyright 2006 Big RED and Shiny, Inc.

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Diller + Scofidio
ICA Boston
Fan Pier
Boston, Massachusetts

arcspace.com (http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/index.htm)
November 2002

"The design of the ICA negotiates between two competing objectives: to perform as a dynamic civic building filled with public and social activities, and as a contemplative space providing individual visitors with intimate experiences with contemporary art. The "public" building is built from the ground up; the "intimate" building, from the sky down."

Elizabeth Diller

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/photo-1.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

The design for the new ICA waterfront museum will triple the ICA's current exhibition space and provide both a world class exhibition space and a vibrant center for public performances, educational activities and waterfront access.

The facade of the new ICA consists of identically sized vertical planks that alternate in composition between transparent glass, translucent glass and opaque metal. The system provides a taught seamless skin that blurs the distinction between walls, windows and doors while responding to the requirements of the interior program.

The 18,000 square feet of permanent and temporary galleries are located on the uppermost level, dramatically cantilevered over the city's public HarborWalk toward the water; providing a sheltered open space at ground level.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-2.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

The 43 mile HarborWalk, to feature parks, boat ramps, cafŽs, and water transportation facilities at Fan Pier, is a primary architectural element and design inspiration that defines and animates the public spaces of the ICA.

The museum's flexible column-free galleries with glass planking feature moveable walls, 16-foot ceilings, an expansive adjustable skylight system allowing natural light to be filtered evenly throughout and polished concrete floors.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-3.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

A lenticular glass wall facing the harbor is a special feature of the Long Gallery, which spans the entire width of the north end of the exhibition space and connects east and west galleries. Composed of microscopic vertical lenses, the glass permits vision out when viewed from a perpendicular direction but blocks vision when viewed from an angle.

The cantilevered exhibition space is supported by four massive trusses, which are silhouetted behind the gallery's translucent exterior walls.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-4.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

The floor and ceiling of the theater on the second and third floors is created through the extension of the wood HarborWalk material from the public grandstand into the interior of the building.

The remaining walls are glazed in clear glass allowing the harbor view to become the backdrop behind the 48 foot stage.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-4B.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

The glass walls can be controlled to meet performance needs, from full transparency, to filtered light and no view, to total blackout. The 300-seat theater accommodates dance, drama, music, experimental media, film, video and lectures.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-5.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

A vertically stepped-out space suspended from the underside of a cantilevered fourth floor serves as a digital media center. Equipped with computer stations for accessing digital artworks, digital education and interpretative materials and the Internet, the space provides a stunning perspective of the water, framed as though through a viewfinder, with neither sky nor horizon in sight. It will be illuminated by night to become a radiant, welcoming waterfront presence.

http://www.arcspace.com/architects/DillerScofidio/ICA/Photo-6.jpg
Image courtesy Diller + Scofidio

Two public entryways provide access to the museum through the first-floor lobby from the street and the HarborWalk, and the distinct tapering of the lobby directs visitors toward the information and ticketing counter, with the bookstore directly behind facing the water. A 165-square-foot glass elevator with views of the water shuttles visitors from floor to floor.

A two-story education center, with windows facing both the street and the lobby, provide workshop and classroom space for the ICA's programs for adults, families, and teens. It will include spaces for creating digital works of art as well as in traditional media.

The second and third floors also house a backstage area for dressing rooms, carpentry shops and wardrobe, as well as the museum's administrative offices.

An adjacent restaurant and cafŽ, facing the harbor side and Pier 4, features sliding glass doors that open to expand into exterior space for dining and performances. The multipurpose lobby accommodates a variety of events, from openings to private parties, and performance pieces.

Groundbreaking for the new ICA is scheduled for late 2003 or early 2004. Completion of the museum, which will be Diller + Scofidio's first major new building project in the United States, is projected for spring 2006.

Client: Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston
Architects: Diller + Scofidio
Collaborating Architects: Perry Dean Rogers & Partners
Consultant Engineers: Arup Group LTD
Contractor: George B. H. Macomber Company
Total area: 62,000 square feet
Gallery area: 18,000 square feet
Performing Arts Theater: 5,300 square feet

Founded in 1936, the ICA is one of the oldest museums devoted exclusively to the presentation of contemporary art. Through a comprehensive schedule of exhibitions of local, national and international significance and educational outreach, the museum provides the public access to contemporary art, artists and the creative process.

Project Background

The Chicago-based Pritzker family, sponsors of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize and owners of the Fan Pier properties along the Boston Harbor, dedicated the .75-acre parcel on which the new ICA will be constructed for civic use. The museum will be the cultural cornerstone of the 2.9 million square foot Fan Pier waterfront development - the largest private development project on the South Boston waterfront. The development includes 675 residential units, a Grand Hyatt Hotel, 107,000 square feet of civic and cultural space, several acres of parks and open areas, an extension of the HarborWalk, a protected cove and a public marina providing numerous recreational activities. Fan Pier is a collaborative effort between the Pritzker family's Hyatt Development Corporation, development manager Spaulding & Slye Colliers, master planner Ken Greenberg and master planning architect Childs Bertman Tseckares.
Related Internet links:

ICA Boston (http://www.icaboston.org/)
Perry Dean Rogers | Partners Architects (http://www.perrydeanrogers.com/)

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Art News: ICA Nears Completion of $62M Capital Campaign

http://209.34.82.147/media/1_Northwest_view2_0608101224391.jpg (http://209.34.82.147/media/1_Northwest_view2_0608101224391.jpg)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro Architects
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Northwest view

artinfo.com (http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19283)

BOSTON, Aug. 10, 2006—Financial services firm State Street Corp. has awarded The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston a $3 million grant to support the institution’s $62 million capital campaign. That campaign funds construction of its new and expanded facility on the Boston waterfront, which is slated to open this fall.

With this most recent donation, ICA marks a major milestone in its fundraising efforts, having raised in excess of $60 million toward its $62 million goal.

The gift from State Street also represents the largest corporate gift to the museum. Previous corporate donations include two gifts of $1.5 million each, and a $2 million grant from Putnam Investments.

State Street’s chairman & CEO Ronald E. Logue said his company was eager to support the new ICA because it symbolized the revitalization of Boston’s waterfront area. And through the company’s philanthropic efforts, which have included support of the State Street Pavilion at Fenway Park, it can “preserve the past while advancing the future of our city.”

In recognition of State Street’s gift, the museum has awarded the company naming rights for the main entrance lobby of the new museum.

The 3,625-square-foot lobby of the building — designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro — will provide the first experience of the ICA’s striking architecture, with towering glass walls, views of Boston Harbor to the north and west and a tapered design that draws visitors into the museum.

It will also feature an Art Wall located along the eastern interior edge that will display artwork commissioned annually from an internationally known artist.

“In many ways, the lobby is the heart of the museum—a lively public space where visitors are welcomed, have immediate experience of contemporary art, and enjoy a stunning view of the harbor and skyline,” said Jill Medvedow, the James Sachs Plaut Director of ICA.

http://209.34.82.147/media/3_Harborwalk_night%20rev%206.08_0608101225227.jpg (http://209.34.82.147/media/3_Harborwalk_night%20rev%206.08_0608101225227.jpg)
Diller Scofidio + Renfro Architects
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Harbor walk, plaza, and grandstand

Images courtesy The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

© Copyright Artinfo 2006

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New Construction

karasglass.com (http://www.karasglass.com/Web%20pages/ica.htm)

(HUGE ^^^ images of the glass at that link)


INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART Boston, MA


- Composite panels
- 4 sided structural curtain wall system
- Pilkington point supported curtain wall system
- Bendheim Wall Systems rough cast LINIT channel glass

Architect: Diller & Scofidio Architect - New York, NY
Associate Architect: Perry Dean Rogers Partners Architect - Boston, MA
General Contractor: Macomber Builders - Boston, MA

[pianoman11686]

These guys suck.

[Radiohead]

Are the horses going to race on the water?

Reminds me of the Meadowlands race track.

Win, place or art show...


http://www.geocities.com/pjsullivan201/mlr.jpg

[Xemu]

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/from_provider_globe.gif (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/) New ICA building emerges into the light

By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | November 30, 2006
From cramped and awkward quarters in an old police station in the Back Bay, the new Institute of Contemporary Art has emerged into the light like a cave dweller into sunshine. When it opens next week, the public will see the most inventive, most interesting piece of local architecture since the Hancock Tower of a generation ago.
There are a lot of ways to describe the new ICA; that's part of its richness. One way is to talk about how it relates to its site. The site is in South Boston, at the edge of the harbor. With the possible exception of a lighthouse, there's probably never been a building more intensely involved with the sea. The ICA and the harbor enjoy the architectural equivalent of a dating relationship.
The ICA's architects, who are partners in the internationally recognized firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York, play many games with the water. The museum's top floor, for example, which contains the main galleries, thrusts forward toward the harbor like a telescope. The floor hangs there without visible support, held by powerful steel trusses in the walls. The glass wall at the end is like a lens, and from there visitors can stand and look out across the water.
They will see skylines and islands, planes, lobster boats, pleasure craft, bridges, cars, and off to each side, even a few hardy pedestrians. They'll be voyeurs of the busy city.
Or take the small auditorium called the Mediatheque, which is mostly for kids and their laptops. This room slopes to frame a very different seascape. Its glass wall points downward, framing a view of nothing but waves. "It's like a screen," says Elizabeth Diller. "The mood of the water changes all the time." She thinks of the ICA as being, in part, a huge machine for collecting views of the world outside. By framing them in unexpected ways, the building makes them into art.
Diller and Ricardo Scofidio -- Charles Renfro is a more recent partner -- are a married couple who first became known for their art, not architecture. Their installations often commented ironically on pop culture. A famous one used models and photographs to investigate the many cultural meanings and myths embedded in "The American Lawn," just as they've done with the water here.
In 1999, they received the first MacArthur "genius" grant ever awarded to architects, a $375,000 windfall. The prize allowed the partners to devote more time to their architectural practice. Both are also professors of architecture, Diller at Princeton, Scofidio at Cooper Union.
When they were chosen in 2001 to design the new ICA, they had built very little. "We wanted someone who hadn't yet done a prominent building in the United States," says ICA director Jill Medvedow. "The ICA has a long tradition of supporting the work of emerging artists."
Many feared that the ICA would feel lonely and isolated on the mostly empty waterfront. That hasn't happened. The big simple shapes are bold enough to command the site. As Medvedow says, "This is a building with strong muscles and strong lines."
The architects are as good at details as they are at big ideas. Take the wood, for example. It's Santa Maria, a gray-brown hardwood from South America. Starting at water's edge as paving of the Harborwalk, the wood surface acts like a continuous wide carpet. It approaches the building, bending and stepping upward to become a kind of outdoor bleacher. It continues from there into the building, to become the floor of the ICA's 325-seat indoor theater, where films will be shown and live performances given. The wooden "carpet" then curls upward to become the rear wall of the theater, then curls again to become the ceiling, then continues outdoors as the underside of the gallery.
From outside, you can trace the path of the wood through the building as a brown folding ribbon on the facade. It works as a sort of brown wrapping paper, enclosing and defining the parts of the building that are public but are not gallery space.
The art galleries at the top of the building, by contrast, are enclosed in pale surfaces of stucco and translucent glass -- materials that speak of light. Where the lower parts of the building rise out of the ground, the galleries seem to have come down from the sun. The white interior walls are washed with light from north-pointing skylights. At night, the glass will glow, becoming a lantern floating in the air above the harbor.
The building is filled with similarly expressive ideas. The elevator, for example, is an entire room that moves from level to level, big enough to carry 50 people, with floor and ceiling like those of the rooms it opens onto.
As it rises, it offers a series of framed and varied views of the harbor through its glass wall. "It's like a sofa in front of a TV," says Diller. "The building is a visual tease, almost like porn. We wanted to distribute the view in small doses."
One aspect of that tease is missing. At the water end of the galleries is a space the ICA calls the Founders' Gallery, with that voyeur's view of harbor and city.
Originally this wall was to be made not of clear glass but of panels covered by a lenticular film, resulting in glass that is clear when looked through directly, but which gradually blurs at both sides.
The loss of this wall is the one distressing feature of the ICA. As board members and staffers came to the construction site, they were wowed by the view and insisted that the glass be clear. But what the architects had planned, brilliantly, was a way to convert the harbor view into one more work of art for the ICA collection.
Today the view is terrific, but it is virtually the same as from any high-rise boardroom in Boston. It isn't art, and the ICA could have done better.
The ICA arrives as a sort of miracle. Its birth was plagued by problems. The proposed huge Fan Pier redevelopment, of which it was originally supposed to be part, collapsed years ago. The ICA went ahead bravely and alone.
Then it was dogged by construction problems. The general contractor, Macomber Builders, fell into disarray, partly the result of a disaster last April when scaffolding on a Macomber job fell on a Boston sidewalk and killed three people.
By the time of the accident, the ICA had already asked another builder, Skanska USA Building Inc., to take over management of the project. Meanwhile, construction costs were rising faster than they had in decades. (The ICA's final construction cost is about $41 million; $37 million was the projected cost when the design was first made public.) The public opening, originally set for September, was delayed and is now scheduled for Dec. 10, though festivities for donors and art-world figures begin today. Even by the public opening, details and finishes may still be in progress. As is common with out-of-town architects, a local firm, Perry Dean Rogers Partners, has been working with the New Yorkers.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro admit they learned a lot from doing the ICA. The firm is now on a roll, though, partly thanks to this success. Other choice commissions have been streaming in. The most interesting, perhaps, is the renovation of the High Line in Manhattan, an abandoned elevated rail line that is to be turned into a 20-block-long aerial park.
The architects remember that Medvedow, way back at the beginning, told them she wanted "an important civic building." Medvedow herself recalls asking for "a civic destination, a modest-sized building with a lot of presence, a place that brought people down to the harbor."
They've more than achieved those goals.
Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com. http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/dingbat_story_end_icon.gif

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Expansive Vistas Both Inside and Out

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/07/arts/08ica600.1.jpg
Iwan Baan
INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART The center reopens on Sunday in a
new setting overlooking Boston Harbor, and with four inaugural shows.

nytimes.com (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/arts/design/08ica.html?ei=5094&en=7011724c75957429&hp=&ex=1165640400&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1165554161-fKSPtQTqDRKUavmJRHnJHQ)
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
December 8, 2006

Architecture Review | Institute of Contemporary Art

BOSTON — This is not a friendly place for architecture. Four decades ago the completion of a City Hall in Brutalist concrete sent the city’s cultural guardians into a panic. Since then, with a few exceptions like the John Hancock Tower, the city’s architectural aspirations could generally be summed up in one word: brick.

The new Institute of Contemporary Art, which opens here on Dec. 10, is likely to change all that. Designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro of New York, its taut glass-and-steel forms at the edge of Boston Harbor are a startling expression of public-spiritedness. Conceived as an extension of a 43-mile boardwalk along the water, its ability to interweave art and civic life makes it the most important building to rise here in a generation. It is also a milestone for Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio, a duo who have dwelled largely on the fringes of the architecture profession since they opened their practice in the 1970s.

Their early projects — art installations, window displays, stage design — seemed intended to distance them from their peers, as if they felt ill at ease with architecture’s permanence. Their 2002 Blur Building on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, a grid of computerized nozzles supported on scaffolding and emitting puffs of mist, evoked an ethereal cloud; their current renovation of Lincoln Center consists of a series of surgically precise interventions — a lobby, a pedestrian bridge, a concrete canopy — that suture together existing urban fragments.

But if trepidation is a consistent thread in their work, that’s easy to forget as you approach the new museum. Flanked by empty parking lots on two sides, its bunkerlike form looms heroically at the water’s edge. The building is designed as a series of public zones, with a museum and theater stacked atop a lobby and a stand of outdoor bleachers overlooking the water.

These zones are connected by a continuous ribbon of wood that rises from the waterfront, up the bleachers and into the building to form the theater stage. Then it rises again diagonally to support the theater seating and up the rear wall before folding back over to become a platform for the fourth-floor galleries.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/08/arts/08ica650.2.jpg
Peter Vanderwarker
The theater in the institute has the Boston Harbor as a backdrop, though a
curtain can be drawn to shut out the view.

For now the museum reads more as a sculptural object in stunning isolation against the sky than as part of a dense urban composition. That won’t last long: a hotel, office building and residential tower are planned for the lots flanking the museum. But ultimately the effect could be even more magical. Viewed through a maze of new buildings, the structure could wield the force of a wonderful surprise. And the bleachers should feel more intimate and sheltered.

There are a few kinks. The ground-floor entry is oddly laid out: the main entrance is set at the corner and cuts diagonally into the lobby, creating an awkward leftover space just inside the street facade. The space functions neither as a lobby nor a contemplative corner.

But it is the bleachers that form the building’s public face, attesting to the project’s populist mission. To arrive there you can bypass the lobby completely, passing along the side of the building and entering through an opening cut beneath the seating; or you can pass through the lobby and then a cafe that opens onto a deck overlooking the waterfront and beside the bleachers.

The view is magnificent. The heavy cantilevered form of the museum hovers above, guiding your eyes outward toward the rippling water rather than upward. As you climb the bleachers, the weight of the cantilever is palpable, though the effect is less menacing than intimate.

You might say that this is the architects’ 21st-century response to the grand steps leading up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, another stage where the public becomes part of the spectacle. Rather than engage with the street hubbub, however, the center invites visitors to leave the city behind and embark on a contemplative experience. Beyond the water stretches the city skyline, a view with a tough, unsentimental edge. After the waterfront development is completed, the museum will be physically and visually linked to downtown by the pedestrian boardwalk that will run along the entire waterfront.

Visually at least, that sequence from the boardwalk extends to the museum building itself: from the top of the bleachers, passers-by can peer directly into the theater through a towering glass wall. Actually to enter the theater, visitors board an enormous glass elevator in the lobby. Upon exiting the elevator, the crowd spills downward to the seats. At the bottom lies the stage, which is framed by glass on two sides and overlooks the water.

In essence the theater is a more formal version of the bleachers. Although an enormous black curtain can be drawn around the space when performers want to block the view, the water would certainly be as mesmerizing a backdrop for performances. Watching films framed by the black surface of the water could be a singular experience.

But it is only when you reach the galleries above that you fully grasp how the architects have harnessed the harbor setting to induce a reflective mood. Divided into two parallel warehouselike spaces, this level yields 17,000 square feet of space for art, three times the amount afforded by the museum’s old quarters in the Back Bay area. Daylight filters through a thin fabric scrim, gently animating the space and keeping your attention on the artworks without distraction from the world outside.

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/08/arts/08ica650.3.jpg
Iwan Baan
The media center in the new Institute of Contemporary Art angles downward,
offering a striking view of the water outside and creating shifting moods as the view changes.

The water reappears in the media center, a small room lodged between the two wings that telescopes downward, with descending rows of computers at which visitors can sit to peruse the museum’s collection. At the bottom of the room, a window frames a narrow view of the water’s surface, reducing it to an abstraction; the mood shifts along with the changing pattern of the waves.

That entrancing image sums up the museum’s goal of resensitizing its audience to the world’s tactile surfaces, its patterns, its range of scales — whether the subject before us is the city or a solitary work of art. It is the architecture of empathy, welcome therapy for a self-involved age.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[kz1000ps]

I've seen two different video news segments on this building so far, and all I can say is that the media center, with its view of nothing but water, is quite original and looks absolutely spectacular. Imagine focusing on your computer screen with the water throwing light at you any way it wants -- it's the perfect "visualization" (like what comes with iTunes or Realplayer) to what you do in that room.

While the building will win no beauty contests, I can't wait to see it in person this Sunday, and that's exactly what the ICA folks expected of the structure.

[lofter1]

Lucky you ^^^ that you get to see it.

Pics & Opinion afterwards would be appreciated ;)

[ablarc]

By standing out, it's a perfect fit

New ICA shows that Boston has become more accepting of contemporary ideas

By Robert Campbell

Everyone seemed to be saying the same thing last week at the party that inaugurated the Institute of Contemporary Art's new building on the waterfront.

The party itself was spectacular. More than a thousand invited guests swarmed over the ICA's many levels. They gathered on the outdoor deck to savor the fantastic view of Boston Harbor at night. They were awed by the powerful surge of the top-floor galleries, which hang out over the deck as if by magic, without visible support. They explored the theater, the glass elevator the size of a bedroom, the tiny Mediatheque where kids will call up images on computers. And of course they checked out the art in those flying galleries, which are lit, in daytime, by a translucent roof.

What people were saying was that they couldn't believe a building so audacious, so venturesome, could be built in -- of all places -- Boston.

They were asking whether the ICA marked a watershed in the history of local architectural taste.

Boston has been widely known, for a generation or more, as a conservative town architecturally, despite its liberal politics. To understand why, you have to know some history.

Boston underwent a long depression in the middle of the last century. Its industries moved south in search of bigger space and cheaper labor. Its harbor -- the reason Boston existed in the first place -- was abandoned for deeper ports elsewhere. Boston politics was a legend of corruption and class conflict.

Boston's great depression lasted from the late 1920s to about 1960. To get a handle on how much the city has changed since then, consider the Back Bay. In the 1960s, almost none of the dwellings in the Back Bay were owner-occupied. That neighborhood's great cityscape of townhouses was chopped up into tiny cheap apartments, largely occupied by students or low-income singles.

Except for the John Hancock Tower -- the one with the weather beacon, not the glass skyscraper -- no significant new building appeared in Boston over a period of more than 30 years.

That's why, when the local depression finally ended, Boston was eager to welcome new development. Too eager. Any development. Good, bad, or indifferent.

Hideously aggressive new office towers, scarily out of scale with their surroundings and surrounded by windy plazas that felt like defensive moats, began to sprout. A whole living neighborhood, the West End, was bulldozed flat, to be replaced by apartment houses that looked as if they belonged in Miami Beach. Seedy but humane Scollay Square became the urban Sahara that is now Government Center. The Massachusetts Turnpike marched like an invading army, leaving a swath of destruction in its path. Mayor John Collins promised a high-rise on every corner of the Back Bay.

After years of that kind of redevelopment, in the mid-'70s Boston citizens rose in wrath. They established a landmarks law, to protect the architecture not only of individual buildings but also of whole neighborhoods. Advocates for architectural preservation learned to play politics. They became a powerful force.

This was a huge countermove to the forces of development. On the whole, it was healthy and necessary. But there was -- and is -- a down side.

The down side is the belief, which a lot of people quite understandably arrived at, that anything old is good and anything new is bad. And that, therefore, new buildings should be faked to look like old ones. Or else not built at all.

Everyone loves old Boston. But phony architecture is not old Boston. They weren't doing it back then.

It's quite true that modern architecture is often disruptive to a historic setting. Modernism as a philosophy wasn't particularly responsive to context.

But that doesn't have to be true. A contemporary building, even a large one, can fit its setting perfectly while, at the same time, injecting some invention and energy. And there are times and circumstances when disruptive is exactly what a new building ought to be, just as we treasure music or literature that shakes us up a little.

Most buildings should be modest background structures, quietly shaping our streets without shouting for attention. But there's a place for the performer building too. And even the background ones can be marvelously inventive in detail, as they so often are in the older Boston, and as they never are in today's imitations.

So, to come back to the ICA, has Boston turned a corner? Is it going to be more accepting of the new, the edgy, the provocative in architecture? I hope so.

Because of its many schools, Boston is continually renewed with a fresh tide of youth. And the current generation of younger people seems to be far more accepting of contemporary ideas than their recent forebears. They didn't have to live through the period of bad development, or the reaction that followed it.

So let's applaud the ICA and, of course, its nervy and creative architects, Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro of New York. Let's hope they've broken through to an era of Boston architecture that will be just as exciting as it is thoughtful, responsible, and courteous to its surroundings. We can have it both ways.

.

[pianoman11686]

May 2007 • Far Corner

Die Another Day

The cycle of codependence between critics and stars does a disservice to both public and profession alike.

By Philip Nobel
Posted May 18, 2007

Here we go again. A celebrated firm, in a cloud of blinding stardust, completes a long anticipated project. In early photos it looks as if it has fallen short of the claims made by the architects and the promises implied by their renderings, both published everywhere years ago to great advance acclaim. The firm has been floating along on the power of such words and images for longer than anyone cares to remember and it hasn’t built much, so it should be no surprise that the building is not perfect. Architecture is hard—they’ll do better next time. Right?

But as the ribbon is cut, the critics report: everyone agrees it is a success, possibly a triumph. Paradigms have been rocked, stasis shaken. For the fortunate city a new day is proclaimed; for its citizens, the building is a gift. At some point I make my way to see the new paragon—keeping my mind, as much as possible, clinically open—and it’s a mess, even an embarrassment. Thoughts turn to naked emperors and their court. Again.

What’s going on here? The short answer, a second question, is: “Who cares?” Architects with skills unworthy of their hype have been stealing the limelight for so long now, and with so little complaint from the press, that we can’t possibly be asked to get exercised over another example of this everyday deception: a glowing critical response to a so-so building. This is our world (we made it with our silence), so suck it up. Stroll down to Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s (DS+R) new building for Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), ignore your qualms, and enjoy your time spent in proximity to—no, surrounded by, exalted by—architectural genius.

The long answer to the question—and I think, as responsible citizens, we should contemplate the long answer—is “business as usual.” Business as usual has transpired again, and that business is the perpetuation of a destructive cycle of codependence between the critical establishment and the architects we’ve all come to think of as stars.

To dispatch with the obvious, the ICA’s new home is disappointing. It has been held up as an icon for the city—first by the clients and the architects, now by the critics—and is intended to anchor with culture a new quarter to be constructed on Boston’s long empty Fan Pier. Where that new zone will eventually be there is a field of parking lots and fences; but even if the city is patched, the direction of approach will remain. The museum sits on the edge of the water, and reaches toward it with a deep cantilever, but to the land it shows only its back—and not a particularly well-groomed one at that. Anthony’s Pier 4, the adjacent eatery famous for its wonderful popovers, mediates better between the city and the harbor. It’s clear from the first glance at that poorly detailed, al*most accidental rear facade that the experience of tourists on tour boats and the views of residents of gentrifying East Boston on the opposite shore have been privileged over those of future neighbors and those actually entering the thing. But the grand gesture to the sea looks great in pictures, and that serves architects and critics (and their photo editors) alike.

A big attention-grabbing move is absolutely necessary in an age when, to succeed in mass-market terms, buildings must be reducible to arresting images that can be sold to clients and resold to the consumers of media. That way stardom lies. But the big move chosen by DS+R (from a series of varied but equally strident early studies) results only in spatial confusion. The cantilever covers a much lauded waterfront plaza with bleacher seating—a stop on a harborside promenade that Elizabeth Diller once referred to as Boston’s only viable civic space—shading it miserably. The same photo-ready overhang necessitates the placement of the galleries, which take no chances in cleaving to the white-walled and black-boxed norm, way up high. DS+R then solved that problem of its own making with the same big-elevator-and-narrow-stair combination that works so badly at the Whitney.

Circulation is correspondingly poor; details are sloppy throughout. One room, the Media Center, is cool and earns its raves: it steps down from the trouble-making cantilever to a truly inspired and well-controlled view of the water. If there were equal and consistent experiential payoffs throughout, I’d be the first to say, To hell with the *mundane—endure the circulatory games, ignore the material realm, and transcend. But early praise notwithstanding, there isn’t. So I won’t. And you can’t. Not in this botched box.

For those willing to look past the myth—and when green architects are given a major museum retrospective (however panned) and a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation (however undeserved), that myth is substantial—the firm has been telegraphing for years, in renderings of un-built and forthcoming work, that its finished buildings would take their cues from things we’ve already seen. The image of a folding plane that becomes floor, wall, and ceiling—only an image, because when built it is always a fake—has been a staple of “edgy” work for more than a decade. At the ICA, one winds its turgid way throughout. Neil Denari, who may have been the first to popularize the motif, called his version a “worldsheet,” but the same empty form has been used by Lindy Roy in a house in the Hamptons and, most famously, by Rem Koolhaas in his Educatorium, in Utrecht. If spades were indeed going to be called spades, the ICA would be dismissed, instantly and wholesale, as a startlingly ham-fisted homage to OMA—one, moreover, nearly bare of the transient joys that Rem regularly works into his buildings.

It’s all in plain sight, standing alone beside Boston Harbor. But consider the pressures to write a positive review. Most American architecture critics have built their careers in part by reflexively championing the new. It’s likely they’ve been promoting just this sort of thing for years against a perception of local inertia. When it’s made real, or close enough: two thumbs up. Critics being people too, there may also be a wish to be on the winning team. I’ve felt that pull; some stars are enchanting. Certainly there’s more power in constructing fame than in questioning it. Or is it that such critics think that star-crafted buildings, even if derivative and poorly realized, are inherently better than the alternative? Do they fear that by challenging these architects they might discourage innovation? Do they imagine that promoting *innovation—even just the look of innovation—is such a pure good that the defense of all other values must be suspended along with our disbelief?

I think they might. Or maybe I’m way off base. But the pattern is real, and its effects are clear. Bad buildings by big names get a regular pass. Favorable coverage ensues for the client. Though no connection between high-glamour architects and high-quality buildings is ever demonstrated, the client class learns anew that it pays to gamble on the stars. Other architects retool their practices to get in the game (first stop: drinks with the local critic). Students take note (fledgling critics too…). Mediocrity goes unchecked. The public gets shafted. The cycle repeats. The planet spins. Architecture lives to die another day.

http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/ICA-Boston-DSR-1280.jpg

http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/bondcouple.jpg
Our Bond couple - Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio - stands before the ICA in Boston

http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/ICAnoglam.jpg
The less glamorous face the building shows to its neighbors

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2681

[Citytect]

Wow, the back is a disaster. The parking lot it sits on - oh god! And all the junk exposed on the roof. It's inexcusably ugly. As a former Bostonian, I wanted to like this building, but no dice. It's received a lot of undeserving attention, in my opinion.

[lofter1]

This one got lots of attention when it first opened back in December (articles / pictures) ...

Interesting that 5 months later there has not been even one post from a local visitor or anyone who had a one-on-one experience with the building.

Could it be that one is going? Or those who do go could care less?

(Or they just don't visit wny ...)

[kz1000ps]

Well, I've been, and as I anticipated the Media Center is truly awesome to experience. Had I a reason or the time to be at the ICA on a regular basis, I'd just hang out in this room all the time. But as the author properly picks up on, it's the only room that lives up to the hype. I found the gallery spaces to be devoid of any creative thinking (not to mention that there wasn't much gallery space, period), and the circulation issues were apparent: I, along with seemingly everyone else, spent 90% of time time using the cramped (yet well detailed) stairs over the showpiece elevator. Lastly, kudos to the author of this article for calling bullshit on the plane/ribbon fold going "throughout" the building. It is most certainly a spade.

I ride on the South Boston Waterfront streets at least a few days a week, viewing the ICA from them - never up close - and did I not have the knowledge that building is supposed to be "a big deal" (imagine Ron Burgundy intoning this!) I'd just think it were awfully odd-looking and uninviting. Just like the Federal Courthouse a couple blocks to the west, it saves all its tricks for the water side and gives the approaching public a face - no make that an ass - that is downright ugly. This building needs neighbors ASAP.

[ablarc]

Diller & Scofidio: these same incompetent architects are currently in the process of trashing Lincoln Center. http://www.thecityreview.com/lcenter.html

[Jasonik]

Some photos from January:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/ICA.jpg
Seaport wasteland (big brick block in the center is the courthouse kz1000ps mentioned)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060133.jpg
Entrance corner (seems to be oriented so that the late day's light can penetrate)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060142.jpg
Nice reflected extension of the horizon

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060148.jpg
The 'tacked on looking' handrail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060138.jpg
Public seating

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060136.jpg
Anthony's Pier 4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060145.jpg
Some of the detailing got messed up (not fixed at the time of opening, unclear who is at fault)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060144.jpg
The result of the poor detailing

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Jasonik/P1060149.jpg
The Courthouse (streetside)

[Zephyr]

You can be deceived by the look of this building in these photos. The perspective photos, night photos on waterside, some of the detailing, can make a case that maybe this building is of interest.

But in reality none of that rescues this building, it has to be judged as ultimately a failure, that infill may mask down the line. Seeing it in person is more of a letdown, at least in my view. This looks a bit like a hastily conceived idea. And it may have been built from the inside out, given how the exterior shapes are so clumsily handled. Seen worse, but without the kind of fanfare that accompanied this project.

[ablarc]

Well, Anthony's Pier 4 looks good.



Thanks for the pics, Jasonik.