AIA Maine, announced four winning projects in the AIA Maine Biennial Design Awards Program at its 68th annual meeting, held in Portland. A jury of prominent architects from the Boston area selected the winners from 58 entries. Jury members were Boston architects Andrea Leers, FAIA, Leers Weinzapfel Associates; Elizabeth Ericson, FAIA, Shepley Bulfinch Richardson; and Charles Rose, AIA, Charles Rose Architects, Somerville, Mass.

The winners are:

Honor Award
Writer’s Studio
Mt. Desert Island, Maine
Carol A. Wilson Architect
The jury appreciated the spare yet highly resolved approach to volume and detailing and savored the quality of insertion into the compelling naturalism of the site. “This project is a wonderful example of subtle and retrained uses of materials and details. The plan is implicitly organized to respond to the views,” they said. “Each room offers another perspective, inspiring for a writer: new views … new ideas.”
Photo © Brian Vanden Brink

Honorable Mention Awards

Waynflete Arts Center
Portland, Maine
by Scott Simons Architects
“A very thoughtful project … a careful weaving of older structures with new building elements, where the new are clearly distinct, yet do not upstage the old. There is a powerful insertion of light in the whole composition,” said the jury. “The project takes on the risk of developing a much greater density on the already crowded site, yet it successfully creates pocket gardens that become outdoor rooms, extending the architectural tapestry.”
Photo © Brian Vanden Brink

Maine State Veterans Cemetery,
Augusta, Maine
by Turk Tracey & Larry Architects
The jury applauded the high degree of invention and the forceful sensitivity of the solution, the play between the known and the unknown. “The use of stone is not only a suitable choice, but reinforces the primitive need for a sense of the monumental,” they said. “Appreciation occurs at a distance from across the landscape. The roof forms are a bit enigmatic and primitive, gables in the landscape that are shrine-like in character.”
Photo © Brian Vanden Brink

Ridge House,
South Freeport, Maine
Winton Scott Architects PA
“An experiment in an unfamiliar yet rugged form derived from fragments of the land itself. The result, creating a series of quite compelling spaces whose real purpose is to see above the land, in the treetops, to enjoy the views,” is how the jury categorized this project. They appreciated the effort to depart from familiar exterior materials and said they would be interested to see how the copper will weather over time to blend with the green of the trees. “The juxtaposition between the plan and section is most interesting,” the jury opined. “The plan responds to the movement and direction of the bedrock on the site. The section works against the grain of the site, moving upward as the site moves downward.”
Photo © Sandy Agrafiotis

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