Ramp Project: Taalman Koch, Fly Thru

September 7 - December 16, 2007

Exhibition Walkthrough with architects Linda Taalman and Alan Koch and Associate Curator Jenelle Porter
Thursday, September 6, 5pm. ICA Members Only.

Opening Reception
Thursday, September 6, 6-8pm

This is the 13th commission in ICA's Ramp Project Series and is also the first to invite architects to address this challenging space: the Los Angeles team of Linda Taalman and Alan Koch.

Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, principals of Taalman Koch, will create an installation based on their iT House (pronounced "it"): an aluminum and glass "kit" house, or pre-fab, that has been produced and installed on several sites in California. This project at ICA will highlight one aspect of the iT House design: the collaboration with artists and designers to create applied vinyl window treatments that serve to create areas of privacy within the house's all-glass walls. Vinyl graphic "outfits" by a range of creators, including Jim Isermann (whose graphic abstraction inspired by modern design was the subject of a 15-year survey at ICA in 1999), Liam Gillick & Sarah Morris, and Renée Petropoulos will cover the windows of the ramp that face 36th Street. The interior ramp walls will evoke, through photographic imagery, the feeling of being inside the iT house. The ramp will be transformed into an architectural drawing, the house reduced, in a sense, to its linear forms. Designed to provide affordable design (especially in the often over-heated Southern California region where they work), the iT house is an elegant and provocative solution. Additionally, the iT House addresses the architectural paradigm of the glass house, first made famous by Mies van der Rohe (Farnsworth House, 1951) and Phillip Johnson (Glass House, 1949).

Taalman Koch Architecture was established in Los Angeles in 2003 by the principals who met at Cornell University in 1992, where they were both students in the undergraduate architecture program. Linda Taalman (b. 1974, Norwich, CT) graduated with a BArch from the Cooper Union in 1997. Alan Koch (pronounced "cook" b. 1965, Hollywood, CA) graduated with a BArch from Cornell University in 1995. Shortly after completing architecture school Taalman & Koch began working together and in 1997 they founded OpenOffice arts + architecture collaborative in New York City. Under the banner of this groundbreaking practice between 1997 and 2003, they developed a methodology of working in intensive collaboration with creative individuals and institutions on projects such as the Dia:Beacon museum, a Masterplan for Public Art and Exhibition at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Houses x Artists.

After completing the Dia:Beacon project, Koch and Taalman moved to the west coast to pursue a broadened scope of architectural research. Recent projects include a range of architectural projects including several residences, a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles and a master plan in collaboration with Tom Leader Studio for an archeological park in Castellemarre, Italy. The firm has won numerous awards, most recently the Vertical Garden Competition Winner, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, 2006 and the AIA New York Design Award Winner, Merit Award, 2006 (Dia:Beacon) and have exhibited and lectured extensively.

This exhibition is organized by Associate Curator Jenelle Porter, and will be documented by a brochure publication.


View a time-lapse video of the installation (requires Flash player).

Installation footage and editing by Emilie Froh, William Hidalgo and Johanna Plummer.

The Ramp Project Series
Every season ICA commissions an artist to create a new site-specific temporary work for the ramp that links the first and second floor galleries. A transitional space, the ramp is 52-feet long and is visible from the street through architecturally-scaled picture windows on the building's façade. Especially when it is illuminated at night, each of the commissioned works transforms the ramp into a window on ICA's innovative program on contemporary art. Since the series began in 2000, the ramp has been a site for a diverse range of creative approaches, including wall paintings by Ingrid Calame, Arturo Herrera and Amy Sillman; environmetal installations by Vigil Marti, Judy Pfaff and Luca Buvoli; a light and sound piece by Nadine Robinson; an ongoing conceptual project by Alexandra Mir; street photography by Zoe Strauss, and, most recently, a terrarium/aquarium by Phoebe Washburn.

Installation views at ICA. Photos by Aaron Igler. > click to enlarge









Related Programs:

Lecture: Linda Taalman and Alan Koch
Whenever Wednesday, October 10, 7pm

Linda Taalman and Alan Koch, principals of Taalman Koch, discuss the ramp installation based on their iT House: a steel and glass “kit house” that has been produced and installed in California.

Taalman & Koch will talk about their extensive collaborations with artists and arts institutions, demonstrating a commitment to the pursuit of a thriving relationship between art and architecture.

Location: ICA Tuttleman Auditorium

ICA acknowledges primary sponsorship of the William Penn Foundation for this project. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Dietrich Foundation, Inc., the Overseers Board for the Institute of Contemporary Art, friends and members of ICA, and the University of Pennsylvania. ICA is also grateful for in-kind support from Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

Images, top to bottom: iT house by Taalman Koch rendered in “Hedge” outfit by Jim Isermann. Renderings courtesy of Taalman Koch...Joshua Tree iT House, 2007. Photo by Taalman Koch.


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