I visited the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston this past weekend on a class assignment; in my accompanying paper I came off as highly critical of this museum which I felt suffered from the Bilbao Effect. The Bilbao effect is essentially the phenomenon that ensued after Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum debuted in Bilbao Spain. The building, made of swirling titanium panels, inspired many copy cat designs that seemed to scream “look at me!” Now obviously I’m not a complete aesthetic puritan or else I wouldn’t care about art at all, but I felt like the ICA was pretty spectacular looking in the worst sense. This could have been influenced by the crappy weather and desolate industrial looking surroundings, but I was looking for something a bit more nuanced and subtle.

The building is centered on Boston’s South Harbor– at this point it’s surrounded by torn up parking lots and buildings in the midst of construction. The structure itself employs what is called a “fold over form”; from the side it appears to fold back on itself and create layers or floors. The main (read: most complex and shiny) part of the building faces the harbor. Here is where I found the main entrance which was not at the top of the grand staircase (which is really stadium seating for looking out at the water), but tucked just to the left. Under the staircase and right next to the front door is the gift shop whose walls of glass let you peek inside and survey all the things you’re meant to buy before you’ve even entered the building.

The most striking thing about the building besides it’s placement right on the water (although definitely related) was the little room you see in the above picture. This space seemed as though it had been lowered down from the underside of the building’s cantilevered roof. It looked almost like an attic door that many people have cut out of their ceilings. From within this space you get the sensation that you are suspended above the water. The computer center, which it holds, is overshadowed by this watery view.

After talking about the building with a few people who know much more than I do about architecture I discovered that I was pretty alone in my dissatisfaction with Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s 2006 building. One person described the architects as their “heroes” while another deemed the building “awesome.” I thought this building seemed average in it’s spectacle—if you’re going to make a building that is interesting to inhabit and look at I much prefer the architects’ Blur building, which is essentially an inhabitable cloud.

The point is, I feel like many times people (myself included) determine that an object or work of art is good because the object has been generally accepted as such. Without any knowledge of the building’s reputation, I was critical of it, and weak as I am, reconsidered once someone who knew more than me expressed confidence in and admirartion of the building. What this says about me or the academic world of art, I can’t say. It did get me thinking about the ways in which we look at architecture and how essentially anyone can be a critic of an inhabitable space. We seem to intuit a critical response because we are bodily creatures and we can more easily feel our bodies confused or disturbed than we can intellectualize a painting of which we feel we must know the cultural and historical context of. Painting unlike architecture, becomes illuminated more easily by information—architecture has a more direct relation to our senses.Knowing this, I think it’s important that we take advantage of our innate ability to critique the spaces we inhabit. My challenge then to you (and me) is to begin to think about the places that shelter us and decide whether they can be useful, beautiful or even poetic. Given all the complaints I’ve ever heard about our own Frost Library, I know you have it in you!