Frame of Mind
AIA Maine’s Annual Design Awards
Every year since 2019—and alternate years before that, since 1983—the Maine Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Maine) has awarded Maine-based architects and firms for their excellent work here and around the world. This year a Wyoming-based jury scrutinized 54 submissions from 20 different firms to present honor, merit, and citation awards to 14 winning projects, including institutional and commercial, single-family residential, renovation and adaptive reuse, professional unbuilt, and student unbuilt.
Jeannette Schram, AIA Maine’s executive director, stresses the broader, more sustainably minded approach the awards have taken in the past couple of years, working with AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence. The framework represents the ten defining principles of good design in the twenty-first century. AIA states, “The architect’s call to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare has a new and broader meaning amid challenges such as increasing climate extremes and social inequity.”
Schram clarifies that, while people have gotten used to design award programs celebrating beauty, great architecture incorporates questions of equality, energy, and economy. “I would say beauty and aesthetics are what you’ll see coming through to the top of any of these categories,” says Schram, “but we are also asking people to submit information on the ecology of their site, the cost per square foot, how the project might be repurposed for future use.” The Energy Use Intensity of a project, for example, measures the amount of energy used per square foot annually. “It’s essentially the miles per gallon of a building,” says Schram.
A new award category added this year is the Divine Detail award, meant to celebrate a particular part of a project considered excellent, be it a stairwell or some other outstanding element. And a new question was added this year: whether a project incorporated bird-safe glass. More and more firms are considering these kinds of questions when they sit down to design. “Over time, the practice of architecture obviously shifts like any practice,” says Schram, “like the practice of medicine. And so here is where this national organization is seeing trends and movement.”
Thanks in part to an awe-inspiring landscape, and perhaps even to a pandemic, which has allowed a growth in membership as more and more practicing architects move to the state, the caliber of Maine’s architecture is constantly growing and improving.
MH+D is honored to present the winners of the 2023 AIA Maine Design Awards.
Institutional + Commercial
The Bridge, Beverly, Massachusetts
OPAL Architecture
Honor Award
Partner-in-Charge: Timothy Lock, AIA, Architect of Record
Design Lead: Riley Pratt
Project Manager: Alexandra Pagán
Certified Passive House Consultant: Michael Bailey
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing & Fire Protection Engineer: VanZelm Engineers
Landscape Architect: Ground
Civil Engineer: Hancock Associates
Passive House Certifier: Peel Passive House
General Contractor: Nat Coughlin, Partner-in-Charge, at L.D. Russo
Photographer: Trent Bell
From the Jury:
Variegated volumes provide an organic differentiation between the individual spaces and offer rhythm and identification to the interiors.
Project At-a-Glance:
The Bridge represents the harmonious achievement of blending multiple challenging ecological criteria into one unique holistic form. The architectural form bends and twists to solve each problem with passive house energy efficiency, universal, inclusive site circulation, and minimized site footprint in an ecologically sensitive area.
Project Summary:
Born out of ecological vision and necessity, this new 13,000-square-foot academic building represents a watershed in the history of Waring School, a private liberal arts middle and high school in Beverly, Massachusetts. Serving as a new campus entry point for the school’s faculty and 150 students, the building houses classrooms, informal spaces for independent study and small-group sessions, and an auditorium designed around the All-School Meeting, a daily touchstone at Waring since the school’s founding in 1972.
Meeting the passive house standard of energy efficiency and indoor air quality, the design also addresses the campus’s longstanding site circulation and environmental challenges. The building replaces a repurposed residential structure that was plagued by periodic flooding. Sited above the flood plain and spanning a 12-foot vertical slope, the new building provides a fully accessible path and a visual and programmatic bridge between the school’s lower and upper campuses.
While modern in form and detailing, the design reflects contextual themes in its exterior materials: stucco and vertical wood boards, which blend with the wooded site. The building’s massing stacks two single-story bars, with the upper level rotated 90 degrees to create a truly unique building form that directly responds to the site and program needs. The structure is threaded through an existing vegetated landscape, offering biophilic connection from every room in the building. The All-School Meeting space occupies the “hinge” where the two bars overlap. A large, glazed opening takes in a commanding view of the lower campus, while also serving as a beacon to those entering.
Roux Institute at Northeastern University, Portland
SMRT Architects & Engineers
Merit Award
Principal-in-Charge/Project Manager: Nicholas Vaughn, AIA, NCARB
Project Architect: Nicole Rogers, AIA, LEED BD+C
Project Design Architects: Philip Chaney, AIA, NCARB
Architectural Designers: Lodrys Gomez, Ashley LePre, Associate AIA
General Contractor: Cianbro Corporation
Interior Designer: Jeana Stewart, NCIDQ, LEED AP, WELL AP
Photographer: Ryan Bent
From the Jury:
This interior project uses materiality and space as primary components that organize the building. Use of color augments this discipline as well. The interior partitions promote the penetration of natural light into the workspaces.
Project At-a-Glance:
Located on the water’s edge in downtown Portland, the Roux Institute transforms a 43,800-square-foot spec-office floor plate into a modern workspace with uninterrupted ocean views. The design challenges the performance of the shell space, resulting in a show-stopping environment that cultivates experiential learning through spatial openness.
Project Summary:
The design of the Roux Institute creates an environment offering infinite flexibility and adaptability for this innovative education and research organization that fosters entrepreneurship within an existing 43,800-square-foot floor plate.
Based on a vision to cultivate experiential learning through spatial openness, the programming concept defines a series of neighborhoods where learning occurs within, between, and across spaces without a clear distinction of boundaries. This layout allows the space to adapt to the unique needs of business partners, faculty, and students, enhancing the engagement of its users as programs evolve.
To execute the concept, the floor is treated as a field condition with defined objects located within it. Where walls don’t need to exist to define a boundary, complex geometric structures (called geometric follies) bend and fold throughout the space. The follies are intentionally aberrant geometries designed to punctuate space. Canted from floor to ceiling, they meet at atypical angles and are clad in nontraditional materials. The intent is to blur the definition of boundary by utilizing forms and objects beyond the typical vocabulary of architecture.
Housed within an existing building on the edge of Casco Bay, the Institute enjoys uninterrupted ocean views and access to natural daylight. The transparency and porosity of the follies and arrangement of program elements allow the daylight to permeate deep within the floor plate. Proximity to Casco Bay inspired the natural material and saturated color palette, which contrasts with the exposed steel structure, ductwork, and infrastructure.
Five India, Portland
Kaplan Thompson Architects
Divine Detail Award
Principal: Jesse Thompson, AIA
Senior Architect: Adam Wallace
Architectural Staff: Ben Bailey
Senior Interior Designer: Rachel McBrien
Structural Engineer: Structural Integrity Consulting Engineers
Landscape Architect: Carroll Associates
Civil Engineer: Ransom Consulting
Electrical Engineer: Swiftcurrent Engineering Services
Mechanical & Plumbing Engineer: Nason Mechanical Systems
General Contractor: Hebert Construction
Photography: Trent Bell
From the Jury:
Five India provides a vignette of materials set against one another that achieves two things simultaneously. It provides a contrast between materials that makes each one richer by association and recalls the historical aspects of a building sited in a historic district. The use of steel against stone convincingly illustrates this.
Project At-a-Glance:
Five India was designed to create compact and light-filled city apartments in the heart of Portland’s oldest and most historic neighborhood. Sustainable features include advanced air sealing for the enclosure, continuous and thermally broken insulation layers, cold-climate air-source heat pumps, and durable and historic exterior materials.
Project Summary:
Five India sits in the heart of historic Portland on one of the first streets established in the city. From 1903 to 1966, Grand Trunk Station sat at its terminus, where the Grand Trunk rail line brought passengers and goods from Montreal to Maine’s ice-free seaports. As passenger rail service declined, most of the Grand Trunk infrastructure was razed in 1966. On a fragment of the site that lay fallow for decades, Kaplan Thompson Architects had the privilege of designing a new multifamily residential building as part of the city’s redevelopment plan. Five India gracefully brings the best of historic Portland forward into the new century with a simple form and heritage materials that complement the last standing relic of the Grand Trunk: the original offices that sit on the neighboring parcel.
Black bricks on the ground floor offer a contemporary interpretation of the city’s iconic masonry. Another traditional Maine material, slate shingles, button up the upper levels in a durable, lightweight jacket hung from the building via a rain-screen clip system. In a subtle nod to the property’s locomotive roots, custom-milled panels between the windows feature powder-coated aluminum engraved to emulate the wheel spokes of the trains that once passed through the site. Subject to Portland’s Form-Based Code—which heavily limits building form and location—and review by the Historic Preservation Board, the project was approved rapidly with praise for looking like a “well-tailored suit.”
Five India has a predicted overall energy use of only 22 percent of a typical apartment building, all without renewable energy systems. The entire building uses low embodied energy, carbon-sequestering framing, and insulation materials. The wood-framed building has dense-packed cellulose insulation, and the project has limited structural steel. All interior materials are similarly low emitting and without toxins of concern.
Single-Family Residential
House on a Bay, Southport
Elliott Architects
Honor Award
Principal Architect: Matt Elliott, AIA
Project Architect: J.T. Loomis
Designer Team: Buzzy Cyr, Maggie Kirsch, Elise Schellhase
Landscape Architect: Michael Boucher Landscape Architecture
Interior Designer: Urban Dwellings
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Civil Engineer: Gartley & Dorsky Engineering & Surveying
Mechanical Engineer: Integrated Energy Systems
Lighting Designer: Peter Knuppel Lighting Design
Envelope Consultant: Building Envelope Solutions
General Contractor: Warren Construction Group
Photographer: Paul Warchol
From the Jury:
The bold geometries provide a contrast to the natural environment and capture long-range vistas very well. The materiality of this project is a direct counterpoint to the traditional “camps” of rural Maine.
Project At-a-Glance:
The conceptual design for this project evolved from a desire to reconcile, and make evident, different levels that exist naturally on the site. In this process, the public spaces were placed on the ground while the private programmatic elements were elevated above the site, engendering a sense of privacy.
Project Summary:
The statement from the client, “I like white space,” articulated at the initial meeting, would provide the framework for the design process. His desire was to provide respite and pause for the people inside, as well as objects, artwork, and furniture. This led to a concept grounded in continuous, voluminous, light-filled spaces with varying levels of transparency based on privacy requirements.
Site limitations, both topographic and regulatory, would influence the project’s development while presenting an opportunity to conceive a design that could challenge how the landscape is engaged. Those ideas are expressed in a building composed of two distinct bars stacked and rotated relative to one another: one firmly anchored to the earth, offering the opportunity to move through and over the site; the other suspended above, lending the prospect of an endless horizon while perched in the treetops.
The structural system supports the concept of a building engaged in a constant battle with gravity; the upper bar levitates through cantilevered overhangs and angled steel columns. The heavy concrete mass of the lower bar engages the ground plane, mirroring the protruding ledge present on the site. It, too, is eroded away to frame the sea beyond, making the volume more permeable, weightless, and connected to the site as it approaches the view.
The interiors are balanced with natural light and ethereality. In the kitchen, space is defined by an array of light fixtures hung asymmetrically over a collection of cabinetry boxes. Cantilevered stair treads suspended delicately from the massive concrete wall, in concert with a glass guard, imply weightlessness. Above, the roof peels back, expanding the sense of space, exchanging views of the sea for a newfound consciousness of the sky. Everchanging patterns of shadow enhance the intersection of the two rotated geometries as the house becomes a receptacle for light.
Dojo, Midcoast
Winkelman Architecture
Merit Award
Project Architects: Will Winkelman, AIA, Joanna Shaw, AIA
Illustrator: Natalie Chalfant
Structural Engineer: Albert Putnam Associates
Landscape Architect: Todd Richardson, Ken Studtmann at Richardson & Associates
General Contractor: HEWN Builders, Nate Holyoke Builders
Photographer: Jeff Roberts
From the Jury:
The details on this structure pay homage to traditional Japanese buildings without being maudlin. The materiality reinforces this notion.
Project At-a-Glance:
A dojo is a place for learning, practice, meditation, and connection to martial arts traditions. This dojo is designed to inwardly inspire calm and contemplation while outwardly honoring its natural setting. The result is strength centered in its expression, with submission to its wild site.
Project Summary:
Nestled into the wild of a vast coastal Maine site, this dojo for a single-family retreat is one of a collection of uniquely crafted buildings. The clients sought to create a space for learning, practice, and immersive meditation. In designing the space, the architects sought to embrace the traditions, respect, and trust embedded in practicing judo. The structure and the rituals that inhabit its space are equally rooted in honor and respect.
The heart of the dojo is the physical practice of judo. Its goals were simple: a 20- by 20-foot uninterrupted area. A central mat floor is enveloped by raw, peeled log columns that reach upward to a lantern of glass and rhythmic exposed timber framing. In its design, this core breathes with an elevated ceiling canopy filled with natural light. The central space invites clarity and an upward connection to nature, while the surrounding lower roof reaches horizontally outward to the site.
Below the lower roof canopy, an interior walkway wraps the mat, creating areas for rest and the rituals of preparing tea, as well as simple but organized storage for robes and mats. A surrounding timber bench, with components borrowed from the structure, is versatilely used as a platform for spectators, meditation, and sleepovers, and as a plinth for a woodstove.
Captured within solid corners, a series of custom-crafted pocket glass and screen doors transform the dojo into a breeze-filled, screened pavilion inviting nature into the experience. An outer walkway connects to the site’s distant views. The topography gently slopes downward, sweeping below the overhanging lower roof and revealing a deck scribed to the grounding ledge. From its core outward, the building’s symmetrical character subordinates to the natural ledge.
Old Yacht Club, Blue Hill
Elliott Architects
Merit Award
Principal: Matt Elliott, AIA
Project Architect: Corey Papadopoli
Design Team: Buzzy Cyr, Maggie Kirsch, Elise Schellhase
Landscape Architect: Richardson & Associates
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Lighting Designer: Peter Knuppel Lighting Design
General Contractor: Hewes & Company
Photographer: Trent Bell
From the Jury:
The renovation was sensitive to the original time period of construction by removing layers of interior finishes. The resulting pastiche enrichens the space by revealing a structure patinated by time. The prismatic dormers, with their taut glass skin, contrast sharply with the original structure. There is a demonstration of discipline and mastery of craft in them. The structural requirements of this renovation speak to the care and respect given to the original structure.
Project At-a-Glance:
The house emerges from the ledge it’s built on and blends with the environment. The modern interventions appear in harmony with the traditional. There is something unexpected about it, inviting discovery and begging exploration, reawakening memory once lost to time.
Project Summary:
An abandoned Yacht Club built in 1919 and poised at the edge of the bay sat derelict for years, all while bearing witness to the relentless coastal climate of Maine. After being relocated to its current home in 1946, it endured a series of interventions. It required the right temperament and commitment to restore its historical memory while modernizing the early-twentieth-century structure.
Built partially on a ledge and partially on clay, the foundation was deteriorating, as evidenced by the severe settling of the structure above. Furthermore, it was never designed to comply with present floodplain regulations. The stone walls required buttressing and underpinning to endure the obstinate conditions its site presented. So the superstructure was removed, and the club room was deconstructed piece by piece, each labeled and numbered. The chimney was also dismantled, a giant jigsaw puzzle carefully laid out on the ground for future reassembly.
After the foundation was reinforced and repointed, a new wood and steel superstructure was erected above in the exact shape and profile of the original Yacht Club. Inside this shell, the Club Room was rebuilt, complete with its accompanying chimney. The replacement of a corner of the Club Room with large sliding glass panels, coupled with the addition of two glass dormers, transformed the otherwise lightless building into a two-way receptacle for light. While admitting sunlight deep into the house throughout the day, at night it is a luminous beacon on the coast, a reminder of memory restored.
CLT Mountain Retreat, Quebec, Canada
OPAL Architecture
Citation Award
Principal: Matthew O’Malia, AIA
Project Architects: Riley Pratt, Michael Bailey
Project Manager: Addison Godine
Drafting: Jolie Lau, Shamika Khare
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Interior Designer: Lux Decor
General Contractor: Groupe Laverdure Construction
Photographer: Corey Kaminski
From the Jury:
A pragmatic solution to an uncommon building program. The plan very clearly addresses the tension of a dual-family second home. The spaces allow autonomy or independence for the two families, by the way they are combined. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) technology eschews traditional detailing and addresses the lack of workforce availability in a rural setting. A narrative on how the limitations of CLT techniques were addressed would further the conversation on why this technology was employed.
Project At-a-Glance:
With a CLT structure, this mountain retreat demonstrates a radical reduction in new construction’s typical carbon footprint. The concept was to create a vacation home that two families could enjoy simultaneously, with common space to gather and identical private dwelling units for each family.
Project Summary:
The CLT Mountain Retreat presented an unusual architectural opportunity given the remote, private site and the unique program requirements of the co-owners. The objective was to build a retreat that two families could share simultaneously, with a common gathering space, including kitchen, living, and dining spaces, and two identical dwelling units, to provide private space for each family, as well as one additional guest dwelling unit, all with private views to the surrounding site.
To ensure privacy, the individual dwelling units and gathering space are arranged in a pinwheel form, radiating from a central linear corridor that also serves as the main entry. The corridor is fully glazed to maximize views to the outdoors, providing fully climatized circulation between the smaller peaked wooden volumes in which the family spaces are housed. The goal for the architectural form language was to create a series of repeatable, well-proportioned gable volumes that allow the building’s massing to break down in terms of its scale and magnitude and integrate into the surrounding natural environment.
The core of the Mountain Retreat’s construction system is an innovative all-wood panel made from CLT, manufactured in Quebec by Nordic Structures. CLT is an engineered wood product consisting of sawn planks bonded in alternating-direction layers to form structural panels that can be quickly assembled into a solid-wood building shell. The benefit of this construction system is that the wood panels are carbon-storing, extremely durable, and create a delightful interior environment through the exposed wood interior finish of the CLT. The factory-precut CLT panels were also an ideal choice for this project’s construction given the repetition of the dwelling units; the resulting high number of identical floor, wall, and roof panels; and the speed of on-site assembly required given the remote location.
Renovation + Adaptive Reuse
L.L.Bean Corporate Headquarters, Freeport
SMRT Architects & Engineers
Honor Award
Principal-in-Charge: Ellen Belknap, AIA
Project Architect: Nicole Rogers, AIA
Project Manager: Andrew Bradley
Project Designer: Lodrys Gomez, AIA
Interior Designer: Lisa Laflamme
Landscape Architect: Mark Johnson
Civil Engineering & Landscape Architecture: Sebago Technics
Furniture Planning: Creative Office Resources
General Contractor: Zachau Construction
Photographer: Trent Bell, Ben Gancsos
From the Jury:
The large corporate program is divided into smaller meaningful spaces, providing a work environment that possesses a pleasant scale. The architectural devices knit the contrasting volumes together, transforming a large, rather bland original building.
Project At-a-Glance:
Inspired by their connection to the outdoors and their commitment to employee well being, L.L.Bean transforms a windowless warehouse into a sustainable, showstopping headquarters. The design celebrates L.L.Bean’s storied history with the outdoors by bringing the outside in and connecting employees to each other and the natural world.
Project Summary:
A shared joy of the outdoors inspires the new L.L.Bean headquarters. For this global retailer founded in 1912, social responsibility meant remaining in Freeport with the community that has supported it since its inception. Similarly, L.L.Bean’s commitment to the environment was a design influence that inspired several built environment and materiality choices. Other project goals included consolidating employees under one roof to promote collaboration, attract and retain talent, and connect employees to the outdoors and the brand.
Celebrating connection to the natural world became a key design driver. The building ensures dynamic outdoor views from every interior vantage point. Carved out of the center is a 10,000-square-foot courtyard garden featuring indigenous ferns and native Maine low-bush blueberries. Two treehouses project into the courtyard, an ideal space for relaxation and informal meetings, overlooking the sometimes snow-covered landscape.
The Bean brand inspired multiple design elements throughout, from the triple-stitch pattern found on the iconic Bean boot to the heritage plaid used in floor patterns and rugs. These physical cues are subtle reminders of the company’s legacy. A wood-slat cladding screen system arranged in an undulating wave pattern softens the building’s geometric facade. Generated in Dynamo, a parametric modeling tool, the pattern was derived from a series of local tidal charts beginning on the date of the store’s first sale. The slats provide sun screening and act as a bird-strike deterrent.
An employee council of L.L.Bean team members representing a diverse cross-section of departments and tenure was integral to the project’s success. These internal champions not only contributed to design development but also played a vital role in continuous communication between the building’s users and designers throughout the project.
House in Town, Castine
Elliott Architects
Citation Award
Principal: Matt Elliott, AIA
Project Architect: Corey Papadopoli
Design Team: Elise Schellhase, Maggie Kirsch
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Cabinetry: Patella Woodworking
General Contractor: MK Purvis Construction
Photographer: Trent Bell
From the Jury:
This project addresses the age-old conundrum of injecting meaning into the act of renovating a historic building by juxtaposing the new components against the old. It is possible to trace where the initial building ends and the new one begins.
Project At-a-Glance:
The second phase of the renovation involved converting the cramped attic into an office and sleeping area. Inside, the interiors are clean and modern, distilling historical details into an elemental form. The result is a twenty-first-century renovation that quietly integrates with the old without sacrificing its integrity.
Project Summary:
This is the second phase of a renovation initially completed in 2012. Originally built in 1849 by architect Henry Austin, the early residence of Moses Perkins is characteristic of nineteenth-century rural Maine architecture. Phase two came several years later and involved converting the cramped attic into an office and sleeping area.
The existing attic had been a series of small bedrooms with two doghouse dormers providing filtered natural light. A convoluted circuitous staircase intertwined with the bathroom provided access to the third floor. Disengaging circulation from the bath, a new steel and wood stair was inserted into the hallway, providing a simple, direct connection between the two floors. Skylights above the stair lure light down into the second floor below, taking what was a dark passageway and immersing it in daylight. A large shed dormer placed on the roof increases the floor area and ceiling height in a single move. Drawing from the language established previously, thermally broken steel windows were employed to expand the view to the south, continuing the architectural expression along the facade.
A system of wall panels with reveals spans the aperture between the two floors. The stair follows a paneled wall that culminates in a bookcase at the top of the run, each reveal aligning precisely with each riser. Built-in cabinetry completes the third floor, including a sit/stand desk and surround to the south and a continuous bank of cabinets to the north comprising bookshelves, closets, and a Murphy bed. A bespoke screen, commissioned for the space, provides separation between working and sleeping areas. Inside, the interiors are clean and modern, distilling the historic details and materials of the old into elemental form. The result is a twenty-first-century renovation that quietly integrates with the old without sacrificing its integrity.
Makers Mill, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire
Leslie Benson Designs / Simons Architects
Commendation Award
Project Architects: Leslie Benson at Leslie Benson Designs; Steve Hoffman at Simons Architects
Structural Engineer: Structural Integrity Consulting Engineers
MEP Engineer: Mechanical Systems Engineers
General Contractor: Milestone Engineering & Construction
Photographer: Ryan Bent
From the Jury:
This project successfully reconciles the melding of two building forms and vintages. It also creates a vital community space allowing meaningful interaction between citizens.
Project At-a-Glance:
The project houses a community makerspace in an industrial building situated a short walk from the village’s lakefront Main Street. The client is a nonprofit whose work supports social and environmental sustainability. Phase one encompassed a complete retrofit, including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) and envelope improvements. Phase two will include additional sustainability features.
Project Summary:
The client’s mission is “to enrich rural lives and foster fulfilling livelihoods by bringing people together to discover, cultivate, and share their unique gifts and skills.” They envisioned a facility supporting personal enrichment, local economic development, and social resilience.
The team was tasked with having the design reflect the goals of place-based solutions, accessibility, experiential learning, and the exchange of ideas between peers. Working withing the building’s existing footprint, the design utilizes the open-span bays of the existing structure to house a woodshop and metal shop, studio spaces for fiber, jewelry and fine arts, as well as flex space at both levels. New vertical volumes, dormers and thoughtfully arranged windows and interior openings create a brightly lit, easy-flowing series of spaces for work and gathering.
With a modest budget, emphasis was given to thermal performance (R-33 walls, R-49 roof), MEP infrastructure, solar photovoltaics, and new rain-screen exterior cladding. An economical aesthetic palette was enhanced using varying textures and colors, contrasting raw/industrial materials such as concrete and steel with handcrafted wood. Several architectural elements, including the greeter’s desk and the wood and steel guardrail for the entry stair, were designed to be fabricated and assembled by vocational students and community volunteers.
Phase two of the project will encompass the expansion of the technology and job training areas, as well as site upgrades focused on retaining storm-water to protect the nearby wetlands.
Professional Unbuilt
Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Rockland
Matthew Baird Architects
Citation Award
Project Team: Matthew Baird, Teresa Ball, Sofia Balters, Bob Estrin, Jingyuan Gao, Ines Gulbenkian, Hunter Hughes, Will James, Nick Meehan, Jamie Vinikoor
Structural Engineers: Albert Putnam Associates
MEP Engineers: J.M. Kilby Engineering
Civil Engineers: Hedefine Engineering & Design
Landscape Architects: Coplon Associates
General Contractor: Casey Hufnagel at Mussel Ridge Builders
Photographer: Renderings by Matthew Baird Architects
From the Jury:
The strength of this design lies in what it is not. It is a quiet multi-use structure dedicated to its function. Looking at the larger roof monitors and the volume dedicated to capturing appropriate studio light, it’s obvious these are very functional artist studios. The purity of architectural expression gives the building dignity, and the lack of easily understood architectural cues invites curiosity about the true function of this building, a home for artists.
Project At-a-Glance:
The Ellis-Beauregard Foundation (EBF), an arts organization that supports emerging artists with housing and arts-related grants, hired the architects to design a new artist-in-residence campus within walking distance of downtown Rockland. When completed in spring of 2024, the project will provide four individual artist residences, performance space, and exhibition galleries.
Project Summary:
The project was competitively bid through an open request-for-proposal process. Donna McNeil, founding executive director of EBF and former executive director of the Maine Arts Commission, proposed that the foundation retain Matthew Baird Architects because the studio demonstrates a keen understanding of the contemporary Maine vernacular. It also had prior experience working with notable New York arts organizations, such as MoMA PS1 and the Kitchen, giving them an affinity for the DNA of the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation.
Joan Beauregard and David Ellis, founders of EBF, both lived and worked in lofts in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn beginning in the late 1960s before making their shift to Maine in the late ’70s. Their combined benevolence for the arts eventually led to establishing the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. The new project is inspired at once by New York City artists’ lofts and by the current art spaces that have transformed Rockland. Matthew Baird Architects devised a repeating series of living and working quarters to create an efficient building that maximizes studio space and incorporates abundant northern light. The studios are individual, high-ceilinged, 19- by 21-foot spaces, each with its own front door to Knowlton Street, and are also collective, being connected by communal cooking, living, and exhibition space. The entire campus is conceived as a net-zero-energy project, employing various construction and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems to offset the carbon footprint and create a sustainable foundation for the arts in Maine. Construction of the project on the foundation’s Knowlton Street property began in the summer of 2022.
Pare Pavilion, Portland
SMRT Architects & Engineers
Commendation Award
Architectural Designers: Ashley LePre, Lodrys Gomez
Senior Interior Designer: Erin Anderson
Intern Architect: Jessica Tracy
From the Jury:
A sentimental reference to traditional carpentry, this pavilion does not let technology inform the design to an excessive degree. There is some question about applying CLT technology in the chosen form, but the actual form successfully addresses the notion of transition.
Project At-a-Glance:
Pare Pavilion is a demonstration of the potential of contemporary mass timber construction, as well as a celebration of the long history of wood as a building material.
Project Summary:
Pare Pavilion takes the form of a single wood shaving: the by-product, perhaps, of a paring cut along a wooden block. Emphasizing the freedom that mass timber construction achieves from the traditional limitation of the size of a tree, the structure’s bent 2- by 3-foot Douglas fir glulam construction achieves a monolithic aesthetic. Further, the width of the pavilion is roughly twice that of the diameter of an average Douglas fir. Periodic exaggerated ⅛-inch glue seams visually highlight the glulam construction. A phosphorescent additive to the glue creates a glow that showcases the seams into the evening.
Pare Pavilion integrates playful feats of mass timber innovation alongside traditional methods of wood construction. The structural design borrows historic ground-anchoring techniques to secure the pavilion to its environment. The pavilion is constructed with nine sections attached with box joints and unique wooden pins, each a different shape for ease of assembly.
Located on a walking trail in the woods of Maine, this pavilion is meant to teach, be explored, and pique curiosity day and night. The design unfolds from the earth like the growth of a tree and will live its life in one place. Over time, the structure will deteriorate. Each new season will offer something slightly different to the audience: color change, human carvings, insect homes, and moss growth. This decomposition continues the carbon cycle of regeneration back into the earth. It ends where it begins.
Student Unbuilt
Wooden Boat School, Brooklin
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Citation Award
Project Designer: Luc Thorington
From the Jury:
It is a compelling challenge to juxtapose two building disciplines with centuries of tradition behind them. Wooden boat building and carpentry have much in common yet differ significantly in execution. The planning of this project recalls wooden pleasure craft in that the scale is smaller and the attention to detail is great. The use of materials shows respect for the tradition of boatbuilding.
Project At-a-Glance:
In Brooklin, a town celebrated for its rich history and world-leading practices in boatbuilding, this project establishes itself as the new heart of the community, serving as a primary attraction and site of production.
Project Summary:
This project placed heavy emphasis on the vernacular, prioritizing consideration of climate and culture. With a community so deeply rooted in tradition, it was important to understand its history and heritage. The Wooden Boat School aims to honor the many craftspeople who have built this great community and serves as an investment toward future generations of boatbuilders.
The project’s primary programmatic element is the “big shed,” a spacious room where the larger vessels will be constructed. It also includes a wood shop, sewing rooms, classrooms, and wood storage. Public spaces are required as well, consisting of a cafe and gift shop area. This program is broken up among three different structures. Two of the structures sit on either side of the main walking path, which begins north of the site at the current boatbuilding shed and ends south of the site, by the water. Moving from east to west, the first structure consists of a public program, where visitors enter the gift shop from the top of the site and make their way down to the cafe. The second structure acts as an assembly line of boat production, with the process beginning in the wood shop, progressing through the sewing and drafting rooms, and ending in the big shed. The third and final structure is uninsulated and is used as wood storage.
The goal for the design was to comfortably fit into the rural setting, where its many pitched roofs will resemble traditional New England houses or the peaks of Maine’s beautiful mountains. The buildings are arranged as if slowly moving across the site, aimed directly toward the water and ready to set sail.
Unwalling Architecture, El Paso, Texas & Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
University of Maine at Augusta
Commendation Award
Project Designer: Jessica Angelova
From the Jury:
Border crossings are an enigma in the modern world. The need for control and security seem to oppose the desire for openness and transition. This project addresses the transitory nature of these spaces by wrapping the functions in a taut skin that seems to somehow speak to the dynamism and transition components of a border crossing. The word quiet may be a misnomer, as border crossings tend to be noisy, somewhat chaotic places that almost generate energy by providing a look into what lies beyond the border.
Project At-a-Glance:
How does one reimagine an object, set in the ground to divide, as one that brings people together? This project does so by reimagining the United States and Mexico border as an interactive space and creating a media center for those on either side to inhabit simultaneously.
Project Summary:
The question that drives this project is, “How can architecture create inclusive space?” Architecture is a profession based on the design of the human experience. Without acknowledging the ramifications of a single drawn line when it is translated into the built environment, that line can greatly contribute to the social inequity, exclusion, and isolation of different user groups. At the core of all research and design, the single intention of this project is to promote unity through the crossing of division. This is first seen through the project’s circulation where inhabitants from either side of the wall travel to their two separate entrances and are processed into the building. The circulation is through a ramp system that was purposely placed away from the core of the building overlooking the wall; there is uncertainty regarding which side of the border one is on until they reach their destination and can look out onto the horizon. The forms of the spaces within the building are dictated by the wall. The wall continues into the building, splits apart, and erodes to create the interactive spaces within the building. This program is “the living room,” where louder interactions can take place, and includes coworking spaces. Quiet spaces surround this space, where one has the option to work by oneself. A book stack is created by the wall—and wall splitting—and carries on throughout the entire building as a symbol of unity.