Harbour master: Boston's latest cultural landmark is a welcoming waterfront beacon and structural tour de force.

Boston is changing. The availability of waterfront sites and piers formerly used for shipping and marine services, together with the 'big dig', a large-scale urban infrastructure initiative that has successfully rerouted major roads underground and released new land for development, are having a major impact on the form and shape of the city. The Institute of Contemporary Art, formerly housed in existing buildings in the Back Bay and the focus of a lively year-round programme of exhibitions, events and educational outreach activities, is also an important component of this city-wide transformation. Aware that it would benefit from having specially designed facilities and had the potential to attract more people, the Institute was offered a site on Fan Pier in 1999 with the opportunity to develop a new building. An open flat piece of land in the South Boston Waterfront District, it commands panoramic views out across the broad expanse of Boston Harbour and is surrounded on three sides by a sea of temporary car parking, existing waterfront sheds, office towers and the commanding presence of the Joseph Moakley Courthouse.

A year long search for an architect prompted an international short list and the eventual appointment of New York based interdisciplinary practice of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in 2001. It was a decision that underlined the client's particular interest in creating a building that would fuse architecture with the latest ideas in the visual and performing arts. It was also an inspired act of patronage to award this major architectural commission to a group of designers who, since forming their studio in 1979, had been as preoccupied with site-specific installations, theatrical productions, print and electronic media as with the design of buildings.

Founded in 1936, the Boston Museum of Modern Art was conceived as a place where new and innovative approaches in the arts could be pursued. With this in mind, it was renamed as the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in 1948, and since then has continued to prompt explorations of a widening range of creative activities and encourage experimental work--moves that have underlined a need for spaces which offer alternatives to those of a traditional museum.

In their proposal the architects confirmed this site as one which was no longer located in the private realm of maritime trade or the nether world of temporary uses but emphatically projected into the public domain. The first step, Ricardo Scofidio notes, was 'to reconcile the paradox: the museum wanted to turn inward: the site wanted to turn the building outward'. (1) In response the architects have developed a design which combines the contrasting forms of grandstand and treasure house and collaged them onto a newly formed ground. This new ground, which is made of wood and becomes a part of the Boston Harbourwalk, is simultaneously folded into a series of stepped terraces to create amphitheatres, boardwalks and lookouts that connect the building to the site along its northern boundary. At the eastern edge, the deck becomes an outdoor terrace for the Institute's new waterside cafe while in the north-western corner it steps up into the building to form the raked floor of an experimental theatre. Located over the main entrance, where there is a reception space, ticket sales, shop and a large glazed lift, this is no concealed black box but rather a space that has been emphatically revealed. Planned to accommodate a wide range of different activities--dance, drama, music, film and experimental media--the theatre is enclosed by two walls of glass to form a surprising link connecting waterfront and building, outdoors and in, spontaneity and the rehearsed.

While the spaces projected to support the spectacle of the Institute's public activities are largely concentrated along the waterfront, the new building also contains a large gallery intended to house a growing permanent collection and provide a venue for travelling exhibitions. Confronted with the demanding requirements of flexibility, environmental control and security, this space is organised on a single level and lifted high above the ground. Built on a site created by a spectacular cantilever that also shelters the public spaces below, this new treasure house is toplit by a series of light scoops and conceived as a box within a box. Wrapped in a shimmering skin of translucent glass planks it seems almost to hover in a space captured between earth and sky.

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Structurally, this project is a tour de force. Four trusses, each almost 60 metres long and 6 metres in height, run the length of the gallery. The quartet of trusses form a cantilever of around 22 metres and at the same time provide the basis for a system of hanging steel beams that are a part of the structure for the theatre below. However, this is also a structure which, albeit suggested by shadowy outlines in some of the initial design drawings, remains hidden in the completed building. Instead a single edited curving line suggests an idea of structure designed to be read at the scale of the setting as well as that of the building.

Elizabeth Diller referred to this setting when she spoke of 'the distraction of the water itself' (2) as a challenge of the project. However while the elevation and wrapping of the treasure house effectively isolate the galleries, the distraction of the water has been put to good effect elsewhere. By creating a long gallery across the entire northern face of the building which connects the exhibition spaces, the design not only provides a place to rest both the body and eye, but also creates a spectacular observation deck with views out across the wide expanse of water.

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Arguably, however, it is the mediatheque that is the most memorable space within the building and where the distraction of the water is most effective. This stepped tube of space which protrudes from the underside of the cantilever is focused exclusively on the rippling surface of the harbour. As if assisted by some strange optical device, the patch of water is removed from its context and transformed into a scale-less, shimmering image framed by the enclosure of the room. Designed with fitted benches and equipped with an ordered series of digital workstations--each incidentally with a screen saver that repeats the watery image--this is a workspace where the water has been magically transformed from a distraction to an ephemeral presence. It is an image that seems to characterise the preoccupation with new ways of seeing and alternative views this freshly reinvented institution seeks to advance.

At a time when new-found freedoms are refocusing conceptions of contemporary art, Diller Scofidio + Renfro have responded by devising an architecture that creates both open arenas in which artists can freely explore ideas and contemplative spaces where their work can be held, presented and studied within the vast landscape of a transforming city.

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