Architecture: First Thinking, Then Building

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But viewing decks and glass elevators are things you can find in a lot of buildings that don't come with elaborate theoretical justifications. The truly impressive aesthetic gamesmanship at the ICA takes place in the deceptively simple Mediatheque, a sloping room with grandstand-style seating, each tier equipped with computer stations for looking at digital artworks and downloading videos about artists. Suspended at an angle from beneath the long, cantilevered upper story, the room culminates in a window wall that looks down directly onto the surface of Boston Harbor, roughly 40 ft. below. The result is the kind of view you might get by looking down onto the surface of a pool through a diving mask: a horizonless sheet of water that fills the entire rectangle.

That glimmering water wall is more than a spectacular variation on wallpaper. It's an ingenious visual trick, an instantaneous conversion of nature to art by the mere act of framing the scene. Europe in the 18th century saw a vogue among painters and travelers for the Claude glass, an optical device that framed views in the manner of landscape painter Claude Lorrain and lent them something like his subdued tones. The Mediatheque functions in a similar way, but with even simpler means, aestheticizing a bit of nature simply by pointing us toward it just so. In a room where people will examine art on computer screens, reality becomes one more screen. As Scofidio likes to say, "It's the ultimate screensaver."

Since the ICA is one of the linchpins of the city's plan to redevelop the waterfront, it was important to Medvedow and her architects to make the building a place where people could gather even when they weren't there for the art. It sits on a gray wood esplanade that, if all goes as planned, will become part of 47 miles of new harborside walkways. Diller and Scofidio have used the same wood to create a wide outdoor staircase that doubles as a bleachers-style seating area. It's located just under the ICA's major exterior flourish, a fourth floor that cantilevers 80 ft. into space like a giant diving board. The hope is that the stairway will become a gathering spot like the Spanish Steps in Rome. It won't have the advantage of being surrounded by Rome, but unlike the sunbaked and overcrowded Spanish Steps, it will have a sheltering overhang and a harbor view.