In collaboration with Rockland Maine City Planning and MRLD Landscape Architecture + Urbanism we have been commissioned to create a design vision for their Redevelopment Plan for the Beggar’s Wharf brownfield waterfront district of Rockland. We are proposing a mixed use of public parks, exhibition and event spaces, maker space studio and workshop facilities, conference and co-work spaces, artist-in-residence work / live studios, townhouses with flex studio apartments, commercial, marina, and hotel.
Rockland is becoming one of Maine’s art and cultural meccas. The Farnsworth and Center for Maine Contemporary Art among other art and cultural institutions draw approximately fifty thousand visitors annually. Rockland’s waterfront is underutilized currently, while the adjacent, inland historic business district is thriving and dense.
The heart of the Beggar’s Wharf Redevelopment is the Arts Complex. This collective of mixed-uses act as stewards for the public park spaces in, around, and on the full block development. The Museum at the gateway corner begins as an interior ground seamless with the streetscape outside, unfurling upward through intermingling indoor and outdoor spatial sequences. Along the way are galleries, theater and lecture spaces, cafes and markets, terraces and parks. The historic Bicknell Factory Building, the original Beggar's Wharf hub, is reclaimed as a continuation of the Museum exhibition / event space, with educational and studio space in the large mezzanine suspended from above. The block is bisected by pedestrian throughways and a center-block sculpture garden and includes ground floor commercial, townhouses and artist-in-residence work / live studios.