People/Products

It seems remarkable that architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio—longtime irreverent skeptics of the very idea of the art museum—ever won the commission to design the recently completed home of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in Boston. But ICA director Jill Medvedow—whose short list ran from Diller+Scofidio, of New York, to Peter Zumthor, of Switzerland; Office dA, of Boston; and Studio Granda, of Iceland—was more than willing to take risks.

Photo © Nic Lehoux

The ICA rises like a giant periscope, its lens hovering tantalizingly at the brink. Engaging the water is so key to the scheme that the structure’s landside—its main approach—almost feels like its rear. Most people, unless in a water taxi, arrive across a sea of parking lots (future hotel, residential, and mixed-use sites, now in development) to an apertureless, banded composition of channel and clear glass with matte-aluminum panels. The entry, understated as a back door, slips visitors in obliquely at the southwest corner.

On the waterside, the $41 million building reveals its most open and dynamic face. In the trade-off with the BRA, the architects were not merely broadening the HarborWalk and gaining gallery space. They envisioned the path extending up metaphorically into the building, like a single undulant ribbon “enfolding public and private realms,” as Diller puts it. With one continuous surface material—Santa Maria, a hardwood used in boatbuilding—the boardwalk “flows” up to form stadium steps (a see-and- be-seen venue) overlooking the water. The deck then morphs into the stage floor and raked seating inside the museum’s theater, only to curl back, wrapping the auditorium ceiling and rolling outdoors again as the cantilever’s underbelly above the grandstand. Revealing the wood’s course, the east and west elevations are essentially section cuts. “The Fold,” hardly a new idea, was all the rage in the 1990s, inspired by writings of Gilles Deleuze and the proclivities of emerging computer software. Despite that decade’s prodigious outflow of “folded” schemes from architecture schools and theoretical practices, only a few (from UN Studio and several other firms) actually got built.

While the ICA’s fold flows dynamically down the building’s west side, the curve becomes more rigid, far less expressive on the east face, where it seems almost a conceit superimposed on more straightforward, rectilinear forms. Diller suggests that where it unfurls into a grandstand, the form subverts the traditional notion of monumental front steps rising to a rarified domain of art. Whether or not the ICA’s understated entrance and transposed “front steps” really buck The Establishment (and that’s arguable), the building responds, most of all, to the aqueous edge.


People

Owner
Institute of Contemporary Art

Architect
Diller Scofidio + Renfro
601 W. 26th St. Suite 1815
New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212.260.7971
Fax: 212.260.7924

Associate Architect(s)
Perry Dean Rogers Partners Architects
www.perrydeanrogers.com/

Engineer(s)
Structural, Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing
Arup New York
www.arup.com/americas

Miscellaneous Metal Engineering  
Robert Silman Associates  
www.rsapc.com  
 
Consultants:  
Lighting:  
Arup Lighting  
 
Vertical Circulation Consultant  
Jenkins and Huntington  
 
Curtainwall:  
Curtain wall Design and Consulting  
 
Acoustical/ AV  
Jaffee Holden Acoustics  
 
Theater Design  
Fischer Dachs Associates  
 
IT, Security, AV  
CCR Pyramid  
 
Vertical Circulation Consultant  
Jenkins and Huntington  
 
Hardware:  
Campbell McCabe Inc  
 
General Contractor:  
Skanska USA  
www.usa.skanska.com
Photograher(s)
Nic Lehoux 
t.604.874.0918
c.604.805.1811
e.nic@niclehoux.com
www.niclehoux.com
 
Peter Vanderwarker
32 Prince Street
West Newton, MA 02465
Phone / Fax: 617 964 2728
Cell: 857 231 1466
Email: peter@vanderwarker.com 
www.vanderwarker.com/

 

Products

Structural system:

Structural steel frame and mega trusses.  Poured in place concrete slabs over metal deck.  
 
Aluminum and glass curtain wall:  
Wausau   
 
Channel glass rainscreen  
Glass component and support system: Bendheim  
Vinyl component:
3M dusted crystal by Design Communications
 
 
Stucco: (Interior and Exterior)  
Sto  
 
Wood Decking, Ceiling  
RDA, Environmental Interiors  
 
Glazing  
Insulated glass units at curtain wall by Oldcastle.  
 
Metal Panel:  
Karas and Karas Glass Co  
 
Founder's gallery and Mediateque curtain wall:  
Pilkington  
 
Doors:  
Entrances:
Glass by Oldcastle
 
Sliding doors: 
Doorman
 
Fire control grilles, security doors: McKeon door  
Pocketed Hollow metal doors: Total doors  
   
 
Interior finishes:  
Gallery scrim ceiling:
Fabric by Bergamo
 
Gallery ceiling Aluminum support system:
Environmental Interiors
 
Mediateque flooring:
Lonseal
 
Mediateque upholstery: South Shore Upholstery  
Acoustical Plaster Ceilings: Baswaphon  
 
Theater:  
Glass fiber reinforced Gypsum at Theater:North East Custom Castings  
Sprung floor at stage: Robbins Sport flooring  
Manual, motorized, scrim, black out shades and acoustic banners: Mechoshade  
Seating:
Series International w/fabric by Maharam
 
Rigging, curtains: 
High Output
 
 
Lobby, Bookstore, Café:  
Reception desk, Bookstore millwork: Jutras Woodworking Inc.  
Bookstore furnishings: USM  
 
Stair #1 and all miscellaneous metals:  
Ryan Iron Works  
 
Conveyance:  
Elevator:
Kone
 
 
Swimming Pool:   
Boston Harbor