BY COLIN POWELL
Still a long way from completion, Harriman Architects & Engineers provided the Maine Maritime Academy board of trustees with an overview of where they are on four major campus projects during a facilities and properties subcommittee meeting of the school’s trustees on Thursday, February 11. Principal architect Rob Klinedinst Jr. noted that they have been hired to do pre-design and schematic work, begun in August 2009, and scheduled to be complete by April 2010, when fundraising for the projects will begin.
Preliminary architectural concepts and renderings from the first phase of Maine Maritime Academy’s exploratory campus planning process were presented by Harriman Architects & Engineers to the college’s trustees February 10. A cross-section through the site of the proposed ABS Center for Engineering and Applied Research, as viewed from Pleasant Street, shows the location of the building, much of it below grade, in relation to other campus buildings. Graphics by Harriman Architects & Engineers, courtesy Maine Maritime Academy
The four projects include a three-story parking garage behind Curtis Hall, renovation of MMA’s waterfront, renovation of the current president’s house, and the construction of a new academic building, the ABS Center for Applied Engineering and Applied Research.
The parking garage, Klinedinst explained, will be built into the grade of the hill behind the student dormitory, so that the third level is actually at grade, when looked at from Battle Avenue. Their proposal also includes setting back all three floors as they go up, so that the proximity to Curtis Hall does not make the campus feel closed in. The structure, as currently drawn up, would hold approximately 360 vehicles, with the first two floors for students and the third level for faculty and visitors.
On the waterfront, Klinedinst said work is still very much in progress, but the current plan is to demolish Andrews Hall and move the boiler up to either Payson Hall or Rogers Hall. What the area will look like after that has not been determined. ”[The waterfront] is a wonderful seam between academy and town,” said Klinedinst, noting that his firm has already had a few meetings with the town to find ways that upgrades to both sides of the waterfront can be coordinated. Klinedinst noted that the renovation also affords an opportunity to better plan for potential security needs, as well as reconfiguring the path of vehicle and pedestrian traffic in the area.
For the Wyman House, Klinedinst said the plan is to bring the Co-op Office and Alumni Center out of their current locations and into the former president’s house. This will change the use of the building and require working with the town to make sure the use is up to code. Besides that, there was little information on this project.
The focus of the presentation, however, was on the ABS academic building. The facility, as laid out now, would take up 42,000 square feet on the hill below the Alfond Student Center. The parking garage, Klinedinst said, is largely to replace a parking lot that would be torn up for the new classroom building.
The ABS Center will house welding and machine shops, a computer-assisted design and drafting lab, four classrooms, four laboratories and eight faculty offices. Klinedinst’s partner, Matt Lee explained that since beginning the process of designing a new building last year, they have worked hard to get input from all the stakeholders in the project, from administrators, professors and the students themselves. “You can’t go and draw up plans for a new facility without knowing how people are going to use it,” said Lee.
The very tentative plans Harriman displayed for the trustees involve burying what they referred to as the “toolbox,” or the two shops and the CADD lab, below grade. This, Lee explained, is to maintain the current view out of the student center. The toolbox and the classrooms and general-purpose labs would be separated by an enclosed atrium, allowing natural light to reach the toolbox rooms, and to give a central space for students to study and catch up between classes.
Trustee Rod Rodrigue voiced criticism over the atrium. Noting that the current job market for alternative energy construction and maintenance is growing. He wanted to know if it was possible to make the building modular, and allow inexpensive and rapid expansion of the space, should the need arise. “I would not have an atrium, because it sure is hard to drop something on top,” said Rodrigue. Lee thanked Rodrigue for the comment, noting that input like that is great to get at this stage, rather than when schematics are being drawn up.
Still, Lee noted that the atrium is designed to help keep the building light-filled even during the short days of Maine winters. All the classrooms, offices and workshops would open onto the atrium, allowing visitors to the building to see the activities going on inside each. Klinedinst showed a number of examples of how this architecture is being used at post-secondary institutions around the country now.
Asked about whether the 42,000 square feet represent usable space, non-utility space, or the overall footprint of the building, Lee said the building, as currently sketched, would have 28,000 square feet usable. He also added that this is still very early in the process and only the overall function of the building for academic purposes has been considered. Mechanical spaces, bathrooms and other facilities will be added before the group comes back to the board in April with schematics for the building.
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