We are honored to receive an AIA Maine 2023 Design Award for the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Artist Residency!
Featured in Maine Home + Design:
Category: Professional Unbuilt
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.
Architecture Team: Matthew Baird, Teresa Ball, Sofia Balters, Bob Estrin, Jingyuan Gao, Ines Gulbenkian, Hunter Hughes, Will James, Nick Meehan, Jamie Vinikoor
General Contractor: Casey Hufnagel, Mussel Ridge Builders
Structural Engineers: Albert Putnam Associates
MEP Engineers: J.M. Kilby Engineering
Civil Engineers: Hedefine Engineering & Design
Landscape Architect: Coplon Associates