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But getting to the new ICA and getting back home was a new experience for a number of people. Thanks to the ICA's website directions riders packed the bus for one stop to get off and Courthouse. Except for during the Run to Remember, Bostonist hasn't ever seen more than a handful of people at Courthouse on a weekend, yesterday there were dozens. It was obvious that many of the people riding the Silver Line hadn't ever been on the waterfront branch. There's a first time for everyone riding a "rapid transit" line that is actually just a bus.
Bostonist spent a fair amount of time sitting outside the ICA on Sunday afternoon, culture watching. Throngs of people milled about as they discovered a part of Boston many don't frequent. When the design of the Moakley Courthouse had focus almost ten years ago it didn't have the buzz as a destination the ICA does. Being a patron of a federal courthouse certainly isn't top on our list. Many visitors to the ICA took the opportunity to enjoy the unseasonably warm December day after visiting the museum. Many them exited and decided to walk along the Harborwalk back towards downtown. The Harborwalk is one of the few public space improvement projects that was actually been completed as part of the Big Dig. The walk from to the ICA from Christopher Columbus Park is even more interesting and fun if you've loaded up the Boston Harborwalk audio tour the City commissioned Audissey Guides to develop for them. After the years of hype of what the Seaport area could soon become, the new ICA has shown itself thus far to be a catalyst for increased vitality in the area.
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What a disaster the ICA "open house" was on Sunday. The wait was as much as three hours at its peak. The ICA staff were clearly unprepared for handling crowds of that size, and were reduced to pointing out that people could come back any Thursday evening when there is free admission. (Too bad if you already paid for gas and parking on Sunday.) And of course there won't be any performances on Thursday evenings, which is what lured a lot of people on Sunday to begin with.
Clearly what the ICA should have done is have a week-long open house and allow people to make advance reservations, so there'd be no mad crush to get in. They should understand that "open house" does not mean "all-day commitment". It will be interesting to see what the ICA does to dispel the ill will they have generated.
The vertical glass planks on the fourth floor of the remarkable ICA are LINIT channel glass, supplied by Bendheim Wall Systems and cast by Lamberts in Germany. Other Boston projects with LINIT channel glass include the award-winning Atelier 505, designed by Machado and Silvetti. BWS is proud to have supplied the channel glass chosen and installed at Boston’s first new art museum in 100 years and the first American building by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the first architecture recipients of a MacArthur Award (when they were Diller Scofidio). BWS eagerly awaits the spring 2007 opening of the largest channel glass project in North America, the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Architect Steven Holl's exceptional design features 100,000 square feet of custom sandblasted LINIT channel glass, images on the Museum's and architect Steven Holl's sites. For more information on LINIT channel glass, call me at Bendheim Wall Systems, exclusive North American distributor of LINIT, 800-221-7379 X223 or email me at mfink@bendheim.com. Thank you, Marc Fink.