Location: Rockland Maine, United States.

Architect: Ten to One.

The Rockland Maine City Planning Department has commissioned the Beggar’s Wharf redevelopment design vision as part of their proposed rezoning and development of the Beggar’s Wharf post-industrial brownfield waterfront district. The project proposes a mixed-use development of public parks, exhibition and event spaces, maker space studio and workshop facilities, artist-in-residence work/live studios, townhouses with flex studio apartments, commercial, marina, hotel, conference and co-work spaces. The project aims to create an eco-system for culturally adventurous Mainers and visitors, prioritizing and intermingling open spaces and event spaces, leisure and work spaces, exterior and interior. The Beggar’s Wharf Arts Complex is the heart of the redevelopment design vision, which is a collective of institutional spaces and ancillary mixed-use spaces including public parks, exhibition and event spaces, maker space studio and educational workshop facilities, artist-in-residence work/live studios, townhouses with flex studio apartments, commercial, as well as, in the larger development, marina, hotel, conference and co-work spaces. The project will be sustainably run on a combined renewable energy network of solar rooftop canopies for electricity and a hydronic geothermal loop system.

The Museum at the gateway corner begins as an interior ground floor nearly seamless with the streetscape outside, unfurling upwards through public processions of indoor and outdoor spaces. Along the way are flexible galleries, theater and event spaces, terraces, cafes and markets. The exterior spaces on and around the museum include a variety of public and semi-public spaces including a center-block sculpture garden. The historic Bicknell Factory Building, the original Beggar’s Wharf hub, is reclaimed as a continuation of the Museum exhibition/event space, with a working studio and educational center in the large suspended mezzanine. Framing the other sides of the Beggar’s Wharf Arts Complex full block development are further workshops and administrative functions as well as townhouses and artist-in-residence work/live studios above a primarily retail ground floor. The townhouses are accessed from common lobbies and esplanades at the street and sculpture garden at the block’s center. The townhouses are split-level from front to back with stairs and landings running axially across the middle. Each space is its own floor, allowing distinctive privacies within each space while simultaneously connecting between kitchen and living room, living and study, parents and children’s rooms, bedrooms and studio. Each space can have views to or through adjacent spaces as well as outward to exterior views and terraces. Spaces are framed on three sides by a c-shaped concrete shell, on a fourth side by a steel core, with the ends open, glazed, or with retractable walls.

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