Design Wire June 2024
Maine’s first hotel on a public college campus, aptly named HOTEL URSA—a play on the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor constellations and the University of Maine’s mascot, the black bear—recently opened in Orono. Developed by RADNOR PROPERTY GROUP and investment management firm HARRISON STREET, the $28 million project was designed by ARCHETYPE ARCHITECTS and constructed by WRIGHT-RYAN CONSTRUCTION. Featuring 95 modern guest rooms and a coffee shop/bar called MajorMinor, the hotel is the result of the rehabilitation of two original UMaine buildings: COBURN HALL, former home of the agriculture and natural history departments, and HOLMES HALL, which once housed labs and later the chemistry department. The buildings, originally designed by architect FRANK E. KIDDER in the Romanesque Revival style, were built in the late 1880s. Portland-based OLYMPIA HOTEL MANAGEMENT operates the hotel along with similar boutique lodging on or near college campuses in Winter Park, Florida; Oberlin, Ohio; and Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
BOB GAUDREAU, the former owner of HARDYPOND CONSTRUCTION in Portland, is on a mission to transform decommissioned and vacant Maine churches into housing developments and single-family homes. The rehabilitation and development process, which allows abandoned buildings to find new life, doubles as a step toward addressing the state’s housing shortage. According to the Bangor Daily News, Gaudreau has already completed renovations on churches in Saco and Portland, with possible future projects in Ellsworth and Lewiston. The best candidate for a church-to-home transformation is a building already zoned for high-density residential development or a rural building that doesn’t require too much renovation. Those made from brick and stone require more expensive rehabilitation. “Most churches are well maintained—the structure and bones are solid,” Gaudreau says. “They just require updating to last another 100 years.”
A revolutionary idea from product design agency ALLOY reimagines lampposts as electronic vehicle charging stations. Citing some of the biggest barriers to EV adoption—its expensive upfront cost, users’ battery range anxiety, and the lack of accessible charging stations—designers at Alloy created EVIE, a modern streetlight with built-in EV-charging capabilities. As countries like the U.S. and the U.K. move away from sales of gas-powered cars, a simple solution like EVIE will cause minimal disruption to existing infrastructure while increasing the amount of easy-to-access charging stations for the average driver. The dynamic digital lamppost pairs with an app that provides real-time location data for all charging locations, making it easy to find, book, and pay for a charging session. Each lamppost features two charging ports along with two wide-angle cameras that provide a live feed of charging vehicles. A supplemental station designed for parking lots, restaurants, and train stations, called the EVIE MINI, provides EVIE’s full charging functionality without the added lighting.
A recent uptick in extreme storms is wreaking havoc on Maine’s historic lighthouses—in January 2024 alone, an estimated $5.5 million in damage was caused by a pair of particularly nasty winter storms. To raise awareness of the threat climate change poses to these structures, MAINE PRESERVATION nominated the state’s 66 lighthouses to the 2025 WORLD MONUMENTS WATCH. Part of the international organization WORLD MONUMENTS FUND, the Monuments Watch is a biennial selection of 25 of the world’s most significant heritage sites in need of immediate attention. By pairing global awareness and action with local heritage preservation, the program rallies support for places in need and the people who care for them. “Now is the time to raise awareness, develop strategies, and adapt Maine’s iconic light stations to be more resilient,” said Tara Kelly, executive director of Maine Preservation, in a recent press release. “They can be repaired, prepared, and adapted, serving as a model for other vulnerable cultural resources along coasts around the globe.”
Photojournalist GRETA RYBUS, who resides in Maine with her partner, Zach, and her dog, Murray, spent a year and a half traveling the globe to capture the ethereal beauty of natural hot springs. The resulting book, HOT SPRINGS (published by TEN SPEED PRESS), takes readers on a visual adventure of the unique topographies, regional uses, and cultural meanings of thermal baths. From Iceland to India and beyond, Rybus documents more than two dozen locations, the people who care for them, and the communities that incorporate hot baths into their social and wellness routines. Throughout the process, she discovered hot springs ranging from a simple hole in the ground to ornate palaces and everything in between. The common thread among them all? The healing quality of hot water. “While Maine doesn’t have natural hot springs, we have a small and growing hot bath and sauna culture, and more and more Mainers have developed cold plunge practices. These experiences—in which we seek to alter the body’s temperature—can provide unique meaning to people and communities. It’s what I sought out to explore in my book: what can we learn from hot springs and the people who visit or tend to them?” Rybus said.
British fashion designer and artist SAMUEL ROSS debuted a new “smart toilet” creation at Milan Design Week. Informed by brutalist architecture, natural rock, and how moving water sculpts its environment, the bright orange FORMATION 02 is a reimagination of KOHLER’s Eir smart toilet. It features an outer shell of recycled epoxy resin molded into an asymmetric shape with textured sections and bold cutouts. Ross told Dezeen the sculpture-like toilet “places itself in this incredible gray area in design…between object and artifact and design object versus functional object.” Complete with luxury features like a heated seat, a night-light, a motion-activated lid, and a touchscreen remote, the toilet retails at $25,000. Formation 02 is part of a collaboration between Kohler and Ross’s industrial design studio, SR_A. In 2023 the Formation 01 sculptural faucet—made from Neolast composite material (also bright orange)—debuted at Design Miami.
A transportation, housing, and urban development appropriations bill passed by the U.S. SENATE in March includes $9.7 million for six historic restoration projects throughout Maine. In order to bring the space back as a functional performance venue, $1.79 million will be directed toward the NORWAY OPERA HOUSE to repair the structure, roof, and windows of the building. The PENOBSCOT THEATRE COMPANY will receive $239,000 to support safety and facility improvements at the Art Deco BANGOR OPERA HOUSE, the last remaining building from Maine’s turn-of-the-century “little Broadway of the North.” Gardiner’s CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH plans to spend its $890,000 allotment to rehabilitate a historic bell tower that houses an original Paul Revere foundry bell. Other recipients of the bill’s allocations include the ELLSWORTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY (to rehabilitate a nineteenth-century building), MAINE CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION (to improve the accessibility of Mechanics’ Hall in Portland), and WASHBURN NORLANDS FOUNDATION (to restore two historic properties for educational and community use).
Norwegian architectural firm SNØHETTA, in collaboration with Swedish lighting manufacturer ATELJÉ LYKTAN, redesigned the iconic 1970s SUPERTUBE light fixture with sustainability in mind. The project, called the SUPERDUPERTUBE, comes in four lengths and is made from extruded hemp fibers reinforced with sugarcane starch. Due to hemp’s natural color variation, each lamp’s beige color will vary with different hemp crops. The dimmable Superdupertube features a reduced carbon footprint when compared to the original Supertube (thanks to fossil-fuel-free composites) and is industrially compostable or can be sent back to the producer and recycled to create more lamps. According to Snøhetta, “Our collaboration with Ateljé Lyktan embodies our commitment to pushing the boundaries of sustainable design. Superdupertube pays homage to the past and paves the way for a future where innovation and environmental responsibility go hand in hand.”