ICA windows

One more thing about Justin Davidson’s New Yorker profile of ICA architects Ricardo Scofidio, Elizabeth Diller and Charles Renfro of New York…

The architecture trio had planned to place view-constraining film over the panoramic window facing Boston harbor in the ICA’s Founders Gallery at the end of the fourth floor. This lenticular film would have acted as blinders, allowing you to look directly out, but not side to side. As you walked the length of the gallery, you could take in the panorama one slice at a time, but never all at once. It’s another example of the architects’ desire to control and alienate users of their building.

The idea was nixed when Boston Mayor Tom Menino (according to Davidson) or maybe it was “board members and staffers” (according to the Globe’s Robert Campbell last November) saw the unimpeded view and thought it a shame to chop it up.

But the window-film plan ain’t quite dead, according to The New Yorker. Davidson reports that Scofidio told him: "They'll do one show and then they'll put the film up."

So will the film be up on the ICA windows soon?

“Right now we have no specific plan to install the lenticular film,” ICA Communications Coordinator Brigham Fay tells me, “but we might revisit the issue in the future.”