on the edge; Diller and Scofidio build Boston its first new art museum in 100 years.(Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio open Institute of Contemporary Art )

Byline: Rowan Moore

Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio may not have a string of skyscrapers and museums to their name, but their subtle and witty installations in museums and found spaces have nonetheless attracted a loyal following. This month brings the long-awaited opening of their first major U.S. building, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. From its stunning new location on the Boston waterfront, the ICA will present exhibitions, act as a venue for the performing arts, and, for the first time since its founding in 1936, house a permanent collection of contemporary art.

The building's big idea is what Diller calls "a seductive choreography." As you wind your way up and through the 65,000-square-foot museum to a top-floor gallery poised like a plate on a waiter's fingers, the architecture flirtatiously offers and withholds glimpses of its spectacular setting. The effect is like a boardwalk crossed with the grand staircase of the Paris Opera, a waterside stroll made into a thing of theater.

"In a museum, your vision is always more intense," says Scofidio, "which is why they're great pickup places. When you go to a museum you use your eyes differently. You see people differently." It is this altered, intensified vision that their design plays with. There's one moment where the media_theque-essentially a room full of computers-slopes downward to a picture window that allows you only to look at the ever-shifting waters of Boston Harbor, while the building's theater is walled in glass that can be switched from opaque to transparent. But the ICA's trademark will be what its architects call "the Grandstand," a bleacher rising from the quayside for the public to contemplate the water as if it were a sports spectacle.

In the three decades since Diller and Scofidio became both romantically and professionally ...