Boston Institute of Contemporary Art Diller Scofidio Renfro

The ICA's visionary building captures the stimulation of contemporary culture and the excitement of a revitalized Boston waterfront.

Award-winning architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the ICA—their kickoff building in the U.Southward.—conceiving the building both "from the sky downwards," as a contemplative infinite for experiencing contemporary art, and "from the ground upwards," providing dynamic areas for public enjoyment. The design weaves together interior and exterior space, producing shifting perspectives of the waterfront throughout the museum's galleries and public spaces.

Design Highlights

Exterior

The 65,000-square-human foot building features a dramatic folding ribbon grade and a cantilever that extends to the water's edge. The façade consists of identically sized vertical planks that alternating betwixt transparent drinking glass, translucent glass, and opaque metal. The system provides a taught, seamless skin that blurs the stardom between walls, windows, and doors while responding to the requirements of the interior program.

State Street Corporation Vestibule

The distinct tapering of the lobby directs visitors toward the Holly and David Bruce Visitor Center, with the bookstore directly backside facing the h2o. Along the eastern interior wall of the lobby is the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, a infinite dedicated to original work commissioned from a new artist each year. A 140-foursquare-foot elevator with glass walls on the long sides gives a view of the harbor on i side, and all the floors passing past on the other.

Galleries

The museum's flexible column-free galleries feature moveable walls, 15 ½–foot ceilings, an expansive adaptable skylight system allowing natural low-cal to exist filtered evenly throughout, and polished concrete floors. A glass wall facing the harbor is a special feature of the John Hancock Founders Gallery, which spans the entire width of the north cease of the exhibition space and connects east and west galleries. The cantilevered galleries are supported past 4 massive trusses, which are silhouetted behind the translucent exterior walls. The "gallery box" can be illuminated by night to create a radiant, welcoming waterfront presence.

Poss Family Mediatheque

This vertically stepped-out space suspended from the underside of the cantilever serves as a digital-media center. Equipped with figurer stations for accessing digital resources about artists, exhibitions, and contemporary art, the space provides a stunning perspective of the water, framed as though through a viewfinder, with neither sky nor horizon in sight.

Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater

The floor and ceiling of the 325-seat theater on the second and 3rd floors is created through the extension of the wooden HarborWalk fabric from the public Grandstand into the interior of the building. The remaining walls are glazed in clear glass allowing the harbor view to go the backdrop behind the 51-foot phase. The glass walls tin be controlled to encounter performance needs—from full transparency, to filtered light and no view, to total blackout.

Charles and Fran Rodgers Educational activity Center

The ii-story didactics center includes the Bank of America Art Lab, a workshop and classroom infinite for the ICA'south programs for adults, families, and teens; and the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Family Digital Studio for creating digital works of art.

The Common Room and Putnam Investments Plaza

The northward wall of the Mutual Room features sliding glass doors that face the Harbor. These 6-pes x 12-foot panels extend from floor to ceiling and slide over and stack to open up this the public space. The Putnam Investments Plaza is a three,500-square-human foot surface area side by side to the Mutual Room and the bold Grandstand of public seating. The wood of the plaza merges with Boston's 47-mile Harborwalk, which then continues inside the edifice as the flooring and ceiling material of the theater. This sheltered outdoor space at footing level is a public surface area where people tin enjoy views of Boston Harbor.

Project History

In 1999, the ICA was unanimously selected to be the cultural cornerstone of the Fan Pier waterfront evolution. The opportunity enabled the ICA to envision a new abode with expanded exhibition infinite, new programming, and a permanent collection—all housed within a progressive architectural statement that mirrors the museum's foresight and risk-taking equally a leading contemporary art venue. Opened in 2006, the ICA is a building of international architectural status, a world-course contemporary art venue, and an icon for Boston in the new century.

Back up for capital letter improvements to the ICA has been provided by the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, a program of the Republic of Massachusetts, administered through a collaborative arrangement betwixt MassDevelopment and the Mass Cultural Quango.

Seating in the Country Street Corporation Lobby courtesy of

byersworeat42.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.icaboston.org/about/our-building