ICA | 100 Northern Ave | Waterfront

Friday, October 12, 2007

New ICA, ex-builder tangle over construction
Boston Business Journal - by Michelle Hillman Journal staff

The Institute of Contemporary Art has been open for nearly a year but construction on the $51 million project continues today to repair a cracked floor and improperly installed stucco.

Meanwhile, the former and now-defunct contractor, George B.H. Macomber Co., is suing the ICA for $6.6 million it believes it is owed for "extra work" that was not included in the original $36.5 million contract. The lawsuit, filed July 18 in Suffolk Superior Court, does not detail the extra work Macomber performed.

The ICA suffered a series of setbacks including a three-month delay in opening and cost overruns when Macomber began having financial difficulties. To ensure construction, originally scheduled to open last September, would continue uninterrupted, the ICA hired Skanska USA Building Inc. last summer to finish the project. Macomber -- a 103-year-old South Boston construction company -- announced it was closing its doors in January as a result of losses suffered following a construction accident at another Macomber project for Emerson College.

While minor repairs are generally a part of construction projects, the ICA's situation is complicated by the fact that Macomber has shuttered, leaving its bonding company, Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. of America, to hash out any additional costs resulting from project changes. The bond company could not immediately be reached for comment.

The repairs to the floor and exterior of the building are being completed by Skanska and overseen by the New York architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro.

John D. Macomber, former president of Macomber, declined to comment. The ICA's lawyer, Jeffrey Follett of Foley Hoag LLP and Macomber's attorney, John W. DiNicola II of Holland & Knight LLP, also declined to comment.

In the lawsuit, Macomber, which is suing the ICA for breach of contract, claims the ICA delayed Macomber's work on the project "through various design deficiencies" and changes to the contract. Macomber claims the ICA also "failed and refused to grant Macomber appropriate extensions of time and to equitably adjust the contract price for such delays."

The lawsuit does not specify what time period or deficiencies Macomber is referring to.

The ICA's spokeswoman, Donna Desrochers, confirmed there were errors in the original application of the stucco on the south exterior wall and that there was "natural" cracking in the floor. She said Skanska was completing any necessary repairs and expected the stucco work to be finished next week.

"In any construction project I think there are minor (problems) that may need finishing," she said.

However, the project's architect, Flavio Stigliano, said the ICA is trying to decide how and when to fix the concrete floor in the entryway so it would not disrupt museum operations.

"There has been a problem with the way the concrete, the way the surface texture ended up looking," said Stigliano. "There have been some problems, yes ... not the entire floor but parts of it have cracked."

He said shortly after the floor dried and hardened, strange patterns and cracks appeared. Stigliano said the floor could be fixed by pouring another layer on the surface or re-pouring the entire floor. As for the stucco, Stigliano said water leaks caused the problem. There have been other minor issues that have arisen, such as condensation on one part of the museum's glass wall, which was caused by an air conditioning unit that was not fully operational, but those were taken care of last December, said Stigliano.

Desrochers would not disclose how much the repairs cost. She also declined to comment on the lawsuit.

It was unclear from the lawsuit and interviews whether Macomber was involved with the project when the problems arose with the floors and stucco. However, Stigliano said the ultimate responsibility falls on the construction company, not the architect, since the deficiencies are not design problems.

"I would go to the contractor," said Stigliano.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/10/15/story3.html?b=1192420800^1533874
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

There's no thread on the ICA? I can't find it ... ugh.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a lawsuit with the defunct George B.H. Macomber construction company, which it hired to build its new waterfront museum.
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The settlement, signed at the end of November, was announced almost a year after the opening of the new ICA on Fan Pier in South Boston.

Macomber filed suit in July, seeking $6.6 million. It alleged that the ICA owed it money and that changes by the ICA had delayed the project and added to the cost. The ICA replaced Macomber with Skanska USA Building Inc. last year as work fell behind schedule.

The museum, which cost $51 million to build, opened last December, three months after its planned opening date.

The ICA's deputy director, Paul Bessire, and other ICA officials declined to discuss details of the settlement.

Macomber alleged that it had not been paid for doing "extra work beyond the scope of work" in the original $36.5 million deal, signed in July 2004. The delays were due to "various design deficiencies" and "ICA ordered changes," Macomber alleged.

John W. DiNicola II, Macomber's attorney, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.
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Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.

Source: Museum to pay $2.2m to builder who sued
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

Oh, right, I think I had the same problem, last time I posted about it.

Silly me!

(You can move my post if you'd like, Mr Moderator man ...)
 
Re: ICA

THE NEW ICA: ONE YEAR LATER
Popular? Absolutely. Bold? The jury is out.
In its new space, the museum has drawn crowds, but some supporters hope for more

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | December 9, 2007

The snickers began with the first show in the Institute of Contemporary Art's new building. The art world types called "Super Vision," a survey exhibition featuring works by Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, and Yoko Ono, dumbed-down, name-driven, and predictable.

"It was a show of postage stamp work that we all know," grumbled Claudia Gould, the director of Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art. "I don't know what they were thinking."

At Boston's ICA, they were thinking of something rarely experienced at their old home in the Back Bay: crowds. The ICA, which marks its one-year anniversary on South Boston's Fan Pier tomorrow, sent a message with "Super Vision." This was no longer a museum for the city's small, dedicated core of contemporary art lovers. The ICA was for everyone.

The museum's leaders make no apologies for the initial exhibition, and those that followed. They say the shows, which included solo exhibitions by photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia and sculptor Louise Bourgeois, were not overly conservative even if they were meant to attract more than the hardcore group that used to visit the old ICA.

"The contemporary art world is a very small bubble and most people are not a part of that," said Nicholas Baume, the ICA's chief curator. "For most of the people that came to see the opening, the work was very risky. I had people saying to me, 'Wow, I didn't like everything in the show, but it certainly pushed the boundaries. Are you going to be as edgy as that with every show you do?' "

"Super Vision" drew 111,255 people to the ICA, making it the best-attended show in the museum's history. In fact, the exhibition, over 4 1/2 months, drew seven times more people than the old ICA saw walk through its doors during all of 1998, when director Jill Medvedow took over.

Finding a proper home was no small feat for the ICA. The museum moved 10 times since its founding in 1936, eventually ending up in a renovated former police station on Boylston Street that was so small it meant the ICA had to close between shows to move art out and in. A permanent collection was out of the question.

"Ninety-nine per cent of our audience . . . had no experience with the ICA," said Medvedow.

With the new building come new expectations. The annual budget has grown from $4.3 million to $12.6 million, its staff from 32 to 74 positions. While recognizing that first-year attendance of 300,000 is an anomaly - all new museums enjoy a boom - Medvedow projects between 200,000 and 225,000 visitors annually.

Those people aren't just coming to look at art. They're experiencing the ICA's slew of new programs, whether school and family related, or theater, film, and music events taking place in the ICA's glass-walled amphitheater.

Bill Arning, curator at MIT's List Visual Arts Center, calls himself a big fan of the new museum, but not for what's in the galleries.

"They haven't had their show yet, the show that's going to rock people's socks curatorially," said Arning. "What's been exciting is the performance program. In terms of a big addition to the cultural life of the city, that's probably been the biggest plus."

New life in the area

Matthew Nash, publisher of the online art magazine Big RED & Shiny, has heard local artists and curators waxing nostalgic for shows in the old building.

"Paul Chan comes up a lot," said Nash, referring to the artist who had one of the last shows on Boylston Street in 2005-06. "Thomas Hirschhorn. Love it or hate it, that was a widely discussed show. And I'm having difficulty imagining anything like that happening in the new space."

But for all its charm, the layout of the old ICA forced the museum to close between exhibitions; installers couldn't get one show out and another in at the same time. There was also no room for the kinds of amenities - a cafe or proper theater - expected in a modern museum. The old ICA struggled to balance its budget, and regularly depended on the generosity of deep-pocketed supporters to bail it out.

Medvedow wanted a fresh start, so she pushed hard when the city announced it was looking for a cultural institution to build a home on a plot of land between the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse and Anthony's Pier 4. There was skepticism after the city granted the site to the ICA in 1999.

But a year after the opening, city officials and local business leaders say the museum has already helped bring change to the still largely undeveloped area. Just a few days after the ICA's public opening, Mayor Thomas M. Menino referenced the museum twice in a speech announcing his desire to build a new city hall on the South Boston waterfront.

Jon Schoeck, general manager at the nearby LTK Bar and Kitchen, has seen a dramatic surge in business, particularly on Thursday nights, when the ICA has free admission.

"Also, on the weekends, we see more families," said Schoeck. "It's definitely an attraction that brings people down to the seaport."

And in the next few years, it appears the ICA will have more company in the area. In September, developer Joseph F. Fallon broke ground on the nearly million-square-foot project on land that surrounds the museum.

"What the ICA has done is bring visitors from all over the metropolitan area to a part of Boston they would otherwise not have gone," said Kairos Shen, director of planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. "I think people now can touch and feel the potential rather than saying it's just a place on a map."

Victoria Adjami, who runs a graphic-design firm near the ICA, had visited the old museum occasionally. But she's become a regular at the new ICA, and a member - one of 11,714 members, in fact, significantly more than double the number who had joined as of last December. (Adjami is such a fan she bought four memberships for clients.)

In the last year, Adjami noshed on veggies during members-only parties, took six of her staffers to the diCorcia show, and arrived early so she could get a seat close to the front of the theater for the October talk by musician David Byrne and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.

"There's so much to check out," she said. "It's not just about the one show."

Boriana Zaneva, a Boston-based artist, also joined the ICA for the first time. She praised the museum's free, once-a-month family program. Earlier this summer, she brought her daughter, Dora, 10, and three of her friends, to "Lights, Camera, Action," a hands-on activity connected to the diCorcia exhibit that gave children a chance to strike poses while using props and costumes.

Now, whenever she sees those other children, they "always ask me to take them back with me," Zaneva said. "And I had fun, too."

Kapoor and more

Hugh Davies was also impressed. The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Davies visited in October. He still remembers being mesmerized by the Bourgeois show and by Christian Jankowski's "Point of Sale," a video piece that's part of the ICA's new permanent collection. He's excited enough about next year's Tara Donovan show that he's arranged to have it travel to San Diego after it shows at the ICA.

"Look, I'm in the business, so I go into these places with a pretty sharp pencil, and I came away from that experience very pleased," Davies said of his visit. "I'd also say that it's a huge mistake to judge an institution on their first season."

That said, the ICA's exhibition program has grown dramatically, thanks to the new space. Its budget has increased steadily, from just over $500,000 five years ago to $1.8 million. Baume has also been able to hire more assistants. Associate curator Bennett Simpson, who left this year for the same job at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has yet to be replaced. But by promoting Carole Anne Meehan and Jen Mergel into full-time curatorial positions, the museum now has four curators on staff. As recently as 2005, it only had two.

The ICA has had 14 exhibitions this year, including some that debuted with the opening last December. Before moving to the new space, the museum had, on average, five shows a year. The tripling of exhibition space has allowed the ICA to mix up its program, from larger and more complex shows such as the current "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial" to smaller, single-room projects and installations.

Arning said he's encouraged by what he hears about next year. In February, the museum will bring in "The World as a Stage" from the Tate Modern in London, a show meant to explore the connection between the visual arts and theater, put together by the ICA's former chief curator Jessica Morgan. And in May, the museum will open a retrospective of the work of Anish Kapoor, the sculptor who has become increasingly known for massive stainless-steel works installed in public spaces. Those include "Sky Mirror," shown last year in New York's Rockefeller Center, and "Cloud Gate," installed in 2004 in Chicago's Millennium Park.

In September, Baume and Mergel are organizing the first major museum survey of Donovan, a sculptor who constructs art out of materials ranging from pins to drinking straws.

South End gallery owner Bernard Toale is eager to see the second year of shows. The first-year exhibitions, he said, were not impressive. He passed when asked to critique "Super Vision." The diCorcia show had "too much stuff." The Bourgeois exhibition seemed "more borrowed than curated." And the current design show "didn't feel appropriate for the ICA."

"I think you give them the first year without even questioning anything," said Toale. "Year two you really start to analyze the programming."

Yet Toale considers the new ICA a resounding success.

"I'm still just so thrilled that they are up and running and made it through the first year," he said. "Almost anything aside from that hardly matters."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com
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Re: ICA

The ICA's critics can't seriously expect it to go really far to advance the vanguard of contemporary design. Not in this city. Not in that little space. Not now. Baby steps, at most.
 
Re: ICA

ICA's new space is honored as a work of art
Architects' society awards medal to the museum

By Robert Campbell
Globe Correspondent / January 6, 2008


This is the season for giving presents. Architects love to give each other presents. These take the form of prizes for good design.

Do lawyers do this? Is there an award for the most elegantly argued brief of the year? Doctors? A medal for the most artistic appendectomy?

Unlike those other professionals, architects think of their profession as one of the fine arts. A great building, they believe -like a great novel or film - is a work of art and deserves the same kind of public recognition.

Boston is unique among American cities in that it's been presenting a prize for the best building of the year since 1923. It's called the Parker Medal and was initiated by an architect named J. Harleston Parker.

The medal is administered by the Boston Society of Architects, which each year appoints a new jury, of architects plus some others, to choose what Parker defined as "the most beautiful piece of architecture, building, monument or structure within the limits of the City of Boston or of the Metropolitan Parks District."

The list of winners down through the decades, many of them now either more obscure or less beloved than they once were, is a marvelous index of changing tastes. The Motor Mart Garage in Park Square (1927)? St. Clement's Church, in Somerville (1946)? Boston City Hall (1969)?

This year's Parker Medalist is the Institute of Contemporary Art, on the South Boston waterfront. No surprise here, since the ICA is probably the most praised new Boston building in years. The architects are the New York firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with local associates Perry Dean Rogers.

But if the ICA is no surprise, it's still interesting to read the comments of this year's jury. They didn't always agree.

"The decision to recommend the ICA for this award was a polarizing one for the committee," says the report. "The dissenting voices found the building to be an unnecessarily showy effort that happened to benefit from a beautiful site. The galleries, which were purposely understated to avoid competition with the art, were perceived by some jurors as lost opportunities."

But the majority ruled: "The architects and the client understood that the function and meaning of museums require re-examination. . . . Until recently, the museum, as a building type, was a civic but introverted warehouse for viewing art. At the ICA, the architect/client team created a building that feels like a cultural and educational center, open and welcome to the public."

That's the best thing about awards of this kind. They jar us into thinking about what we like and why we like it. Or what we don't like.

There were four runners-up for the Parker:

The Springstep Center for Dance, in Medford (Andrew Cohen Architects). Disagreement again: "Some jurors praised the project enthusiastically and others found the style derivative rather than inventive." Dissenters argued that the big picture window, intended to offer the public a view of activities inside, frames only the parking lot when seen from within.
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Arnold Arboretum Classroom and Shrub and Vine Collection (Maryann Thompson Architects with Reed Hilderbrand as landscape architects). "A place of repose and education where a light wood and steel-framed pavilion rises from an elegant system of stone garden walls and terraced parterres. . .. Vines are displayed . . . as art would be in a gallery."

Stata Center, at MIT (Frank Gehry Partners with Cannon Design). The jury is chilly to say the least on Frank Gehry's crazily inventive lab building, which is designed to look, in places, as if it's on the brink of toppling over: "Ultimately, this was not in our view a strong contender for the award." (Perhaps agreeing with the jury, MIT is now suing both the architect and the builder for alleged construction flaws.)

Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (Christian Menn, engineer). "Becoming a Boston icon," write the jurors. But they agree with this critic that the bridge's twin towers, with are shaped to imitate the top of the Bunker Hill Monument, "diminish the effect of both the monument and the bridge."

Besides the Parker Medal, the Boston Society of Architects named other winners in various categories. The highest are called Honor Awards, given for buildings that can be located anywhere as long as they're designed by Boston-area architects.

The jury here consisted of three architects from other parts of the United States. They picked only five buildings for Honor Awards. They write that they found Boston architecture rather conservative (no surprise there), but also notably competent. "We found no new style trends upon which to remark," they say, and then conclude: "Even relatively safe design can be both eloquent and seductive."

The winners, all from Boston or Cambridge:

Brian Healy, for a recital hall shoehorned into a former carriage house at Brown University.

Machado and Silvetti, for the renovation and expansion of the Getty Villa museum in Los Angeles. (Architecture is always collaborative, but this one is amazing. The architects list, by name, 75 employees who worked on the Getty project over a period of years.)

The firm Payette, for a lab and museum building for the earth sciences at Amherst College.

Maryann Thompson, for a riverfront house in a large meadow in Westport, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Whittaker (now MergeArchitects), for a Newton Center nail salon interior -Miniluxe - that morphs into a lounge and party venue in the evenings.

The jurors complain, in their report, that they didn't see much interest in sustainability - so-called green architecture - in the buildings they were asked to review, or much low-budget work, or much work by younger, edgier designers.

Those are qualities it would be nice to find when prize time rolls around again next year.

Robert Campbell is the Globe's architecture critic. He can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.


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Re: ICA

Been There
One year later, four views of the Institute of Contemporary Art
Pages 14?19
14 ab ❘ ArchitectureBoston
January?February 2008 ❘ ab 15

Edward Lifson

Yes, I?ve been there. But only twice. Once last winter as a tourist,and once now that I?ve moved to Boston. Since I didn?t live here when it opened, I missed most of the brouhaha. Perhaps I come to it with less baggage.

The first time I visited, I put less pressure on the building. I probably thought a little less about how it might function as a museum that I would visit regularly. I wanted an exciting architectural experience ? a tourist?s entertainment ? something that would communicate to me in broad strokes about museums and cities and art.

That first time, I was somewhat disappointed. Anybody who works at a museum knows it?s hard to get people in; the building can help seduce them.

But as you approach the ICA through the parking lots ? at least until the neighborhood is developed ? you?re met with a fa?ade that belongs on an alley.

The large glass elevator, which could be a signature for the place, is hard to find and presents little drama. The ?mediatheque? is a room of quiet contemplation, a sort of seaman?s chapel. But its view down to the water ? no earth or sky, no beginning or end, just ?nothingness? ? is so forced it makes you miss your freedom to explore. The concept is better than the experience. It?s a straitjacket of a room.

I barely remember the galleries from that first visit. They are plain, serviceable enough, but the spaces seem small, particularly for viewing contemporary art.

I was gratified that the gift shop seemed almost hidden and that the caf? was not overdone. I loved the theater, with two glass walls featuring views of the sea and sky that connect performances to the life of the city. And I loved the outside seating, under the cantilever, making nature and Boston the spectacle, open around the clock.

So now I am living here. I intend to visit the ICA often. I now need this same building to do more work for me ? to work well as a museum. On my first visit as a resident, I was at once more pleased, and more disappointed.

Even with its curving contemporary form, the building still feels subdued. The wood that wraps around the building is purposely faded, like pre-washed denim. Nearly all surfaces are muted. Little inside the building sharpens my vision or my senses. Bland artificial light is cast too evenly in the galleries.

Outside, the milky glass around the gallery level looks more like Target than like Cartier.

But I like the solidity of the place and its lack of arrogant geometries; the calmness of its few materials is handled well. This allows you to see art in a peaceful setting, even if it?s not an exhilarating one. You can visit often and enjoy the ICA without being irritated. It offers polite views of an already polite city.

And maybe that?s what makes it a Boston building.

A former NPR correspondent and host of a Chicago Public Radio
program on architecture and design, Edward Lifson is a Loeb
Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He blogs on
architecture at www.edwardlifson.com.


Ross Miller

Are artists just big complainers? Ask local artists what they think about the ICA ? as I did recently ? and you?ll get similar responses: great appreciation that this wonderful building exists, followed by gripes about the institution?s current relationship to the local community.

Consider this context: the act of looking at artwork has been blown open by postmodernism and cultural relativism. The viewer is free to interpret meaning, independent of the original artist?s intentions. Practicing artists similarly feel empowered to look through their particular lens, then to scavenge and steal from current artmaking practices for their own work. This promotes feisty independence and strong opinions about artwork and any institution that displays it.

This context is further shaped locally by the fact that many artists here make an active choice to live in Boston rather than New York. That decision may also contain a commitment to create work informed by a regional understanding of place, intellectual values, political ideals, even New England individuality. Artists also want relationships, connections, and personal interactions with critical local institutions.

The question becomes whether the ICA wants to be that institution for local artists. It?s a question on the mind of many artists:

?The ICA has never made much effort to engage with artists living in Boston. It has a reputation for showing work that might well be ordered off the pages of Artforum magazine.?
?The ICA went to Fort Point Channel never acknowledging that it was
about to be neighbor to artists who had been there for years.?
?Most artists in the area think they have been ?cut out? again.?
?The opening event for artists was great. I have had no reason to go there since.?
?If the ICA can?t really do more than it has in the past, it will remain marginal in the lives of the artists in the city. It is possible to exhibit work being made in this area along with national and the international stars? I?d like to see that
happen.?
Even with this desire for more engagement, most artists praise the gift that is the ICA building:
?The building is magical: being in the overhanging video room feels like being inside a three-dimensional Edward Hopper painting, careening into the sea without proper grounding. Breathtaking.?
?The long seaward corridor is a wonderful respite from hard looking.?
?The building brings attention and excitement to contemporary art in Boston.? ?The achievement of raising funds and building a truly noteworthy building is a major accomplishment.?

So desire is here, potential exists. An exquisite building sited near New England?s largest working artist community is a start.

In the past, through Vita Brevis and other programs, the ICA has demonstrated its commitment to local places and artists.

Understandably, much of the new ICA?s first year was devoted to stewarding its benefactors. At the beginning of its second year, many are wondering if the ICA will expand its commitment to local and regional artists and find new and unexpected ways to engage them. Its choices now will influence the institution it will become and the degree to which it can become a catalyst that sparks a new level of excitement about creating and collecting
contemporary art in Boston.

Ross Miller is a visual artist who creates art in public spaces
and is currently designing a series of outdoor classrooms with
the Boston Schoolyard Initiative. Quoted comments are from
conversations with a number of artists and gallery owners.


Deborah Weisgall

The ICA hunkers down at the edge of the harbor. A cube of opaque panels, translucent panels, glimmers of clear glass, it invites simile. It looks like a sleek electronic toy, or an alien?s dwelling. But it turned its back on the parking lot ? and on my husband and me ? like a stuck-up kid who thinks he?s much
cooler than you are. It put us off; it put us on edge.

We couldn?t figure out how to get in. The entrance off to the left lacked even the romance of a stage door, so we walked around the building to the water side, to the wide boardwalk, the bleachers rising beside the harbor, the great cantilevered roof, the glass walls.

The architecture had opened up and became eloquent and wise, surprising and poetical. A cold front was blowing over; the edge of clouds cut diagonally across the view framed by the building. A sloop out for a late sail heeled in the wind. A plane took off, a plane landed, and the airport ferry crossed the gray
harbor. On the far shore, Winthrop?s small hill bristling with triple-deckers appeared to be a Cubist landscape. We saw familiar Boston with new clarity, aware of changing light across the sky and water, aware of geography: exposed to setting and place, marveling at it.

The ICA building has elevated its site to art.

And maybe that was why it was still so difficult to find a way inside. We headed for a door set in the glass wall of the restaurant. With lingering resentment, I was sure that it would be locked, but it wasn?t. We had something to eat, admired the view some more, and headed in. We came at the big art wall from the wrong angle, so it didn?t make much of an impression, but the elevator to the fourth floor gallery was worth the journey. A glass rectangle, it rose through its own mechanics while revealing views of both the inside of the building and the harbor outside; in a way it seemed a short tour of the building?s core idea: a play on transparency. The galleries, with their concrete floors and moveable walls, were the only places you couldn?t see through to the waterfront; they had the feeling of a garage, of a staging area, a temporary shifting space that freed us to take the ICA?s collection as part of the flux, too.

Quite an achievement: the architecture had jolted us and made us receptive; it lifted a barrier of reticence between viewer and art, a barrier that we might not have been aware of until it was gone. Transparency leads to immediacy, and the building constantlyreminded us of the site. The water was everywhere we looked. It had a gallery of its own, lined with benches on which to sit and look out at the harbor. The computer room tapered into a long window framing the infinite patterns of waves: a screen-saver ? or a work of art.

We stayed all afternoon. The ICA exudes an active intelligence; it?s much the coolest building around. It frames possibility and change; it?s a study in scale, in presence and reticence, balancing bravado and decorum. And it has strong ideas about how we should see. Of course it would refuse to pay attention to a parking lot. ■

Deborah Weisgall writes about the arts for The New York Times
and other publications. Her novel The World Before Her will be
published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008.


Gretchen Schneider, Assoc. AIA

It?s 8PM on a dark October night. The Red Sox, playing tonight, are down 3-1 in the American League playoffs and still the ICA is alive with people. The energy is palpable, and I actually overhear teenagers asking each other out loud: ?What do you think that means?? If a museum does no more than this, it has succeeded.

It?s exciting to have a building that people are excited about.

Standing out there on that deck with the big gallery cantilevered over my head, I feel the building reaching out to the harbor. The gesture is wonderful and extraordinary enough that you don?t need to be fluent in contemporary architectural discourse or even an architect to appreciate this building. And for the current case of Modern architecture in Boston, that?s a refreshing change.

Think about it: How many Boston buildings do we have ?really ? that acknowledge the water in a big way? The New England Aquarium was first, in the 1960s; as it put the fish in tanks (instead of nets), it established the waterfront as a public destination and place for dramatic architectural expression.

Similarly the JFK Library in the 1970s, Rowes Wharf in the 1980s, and the Moakley Courthouse in the 1990s each demonstrated an increasingly civic attitude towards Boston?s evolving waterfront while declaring Boston?s place in the contemporary architectural scene. As part of the ICA?s lineage, each of these projects expresses an architectural and urban vitality, albeit one cloaked in increasingly conservative garments. Until the ICA.

What?s distressing about the ICA is how fleeting its vital moment may be. I can?t help but wonder what will happen when the city grows up around this building.

On the harbor side, there?s a certain contemplative magic that will be lost when, instead of peering down through the giant oculus of the ?mediatheque? onto water, we instead have a direct line on big snazzy yachts in an exclusive marina. Which, if the renderings featured in the Fallon Company?s website and ads are to be believed, is exactly what?s on its way.

On the land side, the illuminated channel glass looks sexy, especially at night, hovering four stories above the half-empty parking lots. But as hip as it is, it?s really little more than an elegant billboard. Unlike other museums in North Atlantic cities (such as Steven Holl?s Kiasma in Helsinki), here the institution does not benefit from the material?s properties: the translucent glass wall neither filters light into the space nor reflects interior activity out toward the city. Even as a billboard, it?s already been upstaged by WGBH?s new, ever-changing digital face to the Mass Pike. Regardless, it?ll be hard to see once it?s hidden by the tall new buildings now on their way.

As the parking lots give way to buildings, the focus will shift to the sidewalk experience, and that, sadly, is the most bleak. Soon the ICA?s back side will be the front wall of a sidewalk, defining the pedestrian experience of a new neighborhood.

Though the materials are finely detailed and definitely of our time, are the metal panels, opaque glass, stairway-to-nowhere, and one-way exit doors all that different from the blank face at the base of City Hall?
There was a time when Boston was abuzz about City Hall, too. ■

Gretchen Schneider, Assoc. AIA, is the principal of Schneider
Studio in Boston.

ArchitectureBoston
Published by the Boston Society of Architects
52 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109
617.951.1433
bsa@architects.org
www.architectureboston.com
January/February 2008, Vol. 11 No. 1, ?2007: The Year in Review?
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Link(PDF)
 
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Re: ICA

ICA exceeds capital campaign goal
Monday, May 12, 2008 - 2:50 PM EDT
Boston Business Journal


The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston announced Monday it has raised $75 million in its capital campaign -- exceeding its $50 million goal.

The harborside museum opened in December 2006 after construction delays. It was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and cost about $41 million to build.

The campaign allowed the museum to increase its endowment from $1.5 million to $10 million as well as expand its programs, including launching a new performing arts program

More than 700 people gave to the Campaign for the New ICA, launched in April 2000. About $66 million was raised by December 2006.

"The completion of this campaign represents a sea change in how Boston supports contemporary art," says Jill Medvedow, the museum's director, in a statement. "The vision of a forum for new art and ideas galvanized the community -- from leading philanthropists to teens participating in ICA programs, from major corporations to family foundations. It is not only a triumph for Boston's culture but a symbol of its civic health."

In 2007, the ICA received the Harleston Parker Medal, presented periodically to the "most beautiful building" in the Greater Boston area by the Boston Society of Architects and Boston.


Link
 
Re: ICA

It's a moneymaker! Too bad it's also walled in and can't expand.
 
Re: ICA

About a month ago a crane was spoted at the ICA. No one seemed to know what it was doing there, but I think this photo may provide us an answer. Check out the diving platform. The ICA is hosting the Red Bull Cliff Driving competition on August 25th. They also hosted it last year.

ICA Boston 7/1
Don't you just love to people watch?
 
Re: ICA

Love how you can see the people inhabiting the North Gallery.
 
Re: ICA

datadyne007 said:
I don't understand.
Click to expand...

It was the worst museum I have ever been to, and that's saying a lot. It had one decent room, and the rest of it was absolutely terrible. Contemporary art is hardly art at all.

For instance, one of the displays was a large piece of posterboard that had about 100 wheels cut out from magazines and pasted on it. It also had a couple other random things pasted on from magazines. It was worth maybe around a C+/B- in my 3rd grade art class.

Another one was a bunch of old speakers arranged in a square. The speakers were kind of cool, but the whole display was very much on par with this picture I took in Somerville...

IMG_0355.jpg


If the ICA knew about this, they would be salivating. I'm not sure what I regretted more: paying the entrance fee (now $15) or wasting the hour of my life.
 
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