ICA Watershed in Boston, Massachusetts Contemporary Art Gallery Interior, American Architecture, Images
ICA Watershed in Boston
Contemporary Art Gallery Building Redevelopment, USA – design by Anmahian Winton Architects
Oct 15, 2018
ICA Watershed
Design: Anmahian Winton Architects
Location: Boston, USA
ICA Watershed
The ICA Watershed is a large-scale space for contemporary art, located in an abandoned copper pipe factory.

Its site is known as the East Boston Shipyard, an active, industrial yacht basin directly across Boston Harbor from the ICA Museum, accessible by water taxi, car, and public transportation.

Although the Watershed?s original antique structure was derelict and had to be torn down, several of its iconic elements?crane and monorail hoists, railroad tracks?have been retained, used to reference the site?s purpose and help shape the space.
Within the 300? long by 50? wide by 25? tall envelope, the design synthesizes the retained infrastructure with equally powerful, new industrial materials, to serve the ICA program for contemporary art.

Breaking with the customary ?white room / black box? gallery paradigm, daylight plays a seminal role in the space, illuminating a major wall and highlighting both ends of the building. A 250? long slot skylight shines through new steel trusses, allowing light to wash down the richly textured concrete-and-cinderblock surface of an existing wall that had once supported the loading and unloading of rail cars running thr...