Architecture: First Thinking, Then Building

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But by the time of the Whitney retrospective, Diller and Scofidio had already been at work for two years on the ICA project. So for all their ambivalence, they were plainly well on their way to making peace with the idea of museums--or at least the ones they could have a hand in shaping. Plus, they say, there had been a generational shift in the people who run the art world. "People were coming into institutions," explains Diller, "who were rethinking the contemporary museum." One of the people she's talking about would have to be Jill Medvedow, the cheerful locomotive who has been director of the ICA since 1998. Back then, says Medvedow, the place was "striving to be marginal"--organizing thoughtful shows that not enough people saw. Soon after she arrived, she convinced the trustees that the only way to survive was to grow, abandon the cramped former police station that the institute had occupied since 1975 and set out to build a sizable new home with, as it turned out out, architects who had built almost nothing. "It was a huge risk," she admits. "But it was the right risk. If we had everything at stake, so did Liz and Ric. We knew they would dedicate themselves to this job."

In the end, it would be a $50 million risk, but one that paid off beautifully. The new ICA is a fascinating combination of public and private spaces, as well as a building that comments ingeniously on its own chief purpose, which is to foster the art of looking. It can only have helped that Diller and Scofidio came to the job with experience as artists. When architects think of themselves that way, it's usually because they see themselves, like Frank Gehry, creating sculptural form. But Diller and Scofidio have been conceptual artists, more concerned with ideas than the objects they shape them into. Now they have made their biggest object yet, and the main idea embodies how we see. Or, as Scofidio puts it, "The building, for us, is a kind of viewing apparatus. It's a machine for seeing."

For that reason, the new ICA has glass everywhere, both clear and translucent, which is unusual for a museum, a place that has to protect artworks from direct light. The architects have got around that problem by clustering the galleries in enclosed space on the fourth floor while placing most of the public spaces on the lower, more light-filled, levels. Even the 325-seat theater space is bounded on two sides by double-height glass walls so that performances can take place against the backdrop of the harbor. (The walls can also be closed off with scrims when necessary or blacked out completely.) The elevators are transparent, so you experience the view vertically as you move from one floor to the next. And along the upper floor there is a lengthy, glass-enclosed corridor facing the water that visitors will enter when they leave the windowless gallery spaces.