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Unique Design of Roux Institute's Alfond Center in Maine Inspired By Iconic Bridge

The Roux Institute's Alfond Center in Maine is inspired by the innovative design and use of local materials seen in the historic Cribstone Bridge. The building, influenced metaphorically and physically by the bridge, will feature computational academic spaces, labs, and active-learning classrooms with a sustainable design utilizing geothermal wells and Maine granite. Scheduled for completion in Fall 2027, the center will bridge the past with the future, symbolizing advancement in education and technology.

Mon February 03, 2025 - Northeast Edition
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A major educational building under construction in Portland draws inspiration from a nearby coastal Maine icon: the historic Cribstone Bridge between Orr’s and Bailey islands.
CambridgeSeven rendering
A major educational building under construction in Portland draws inspiration from a nearby coastal Maine icon: the historic Cribstone Bridge between Orr’s and Bailey islands.

A major educational building under construction in Portland draws inspiration from a nearby coastal Maine icon: the historic Cribstone Bridge between Orr's and Bailey islands.

Northeastern University's Roux Institute held a design contest for the Alfond Center on its new, $500 million Portland campus. The design needed to embody what is special about Maine, leading the CambridgeSeven architecture firm in Massachusetts to the historic span that connects the two islands near the small town of Harpswell.

Tim Mansfield, president of CambridgeSeven, told the Harpswell Anchor that his firm has known about the Cribstone Bridge for many years and felt inspired by the structure's innovative design and its use of local materials, such as Yarmouth granite.

Built in 1928, the two-lane Cribstone Bridge — also known as the Bailey Island Bridge — carries traffic traveling north and south along Maine Highway 24 over Will's Gut, a strait separating the two islands.

Its unique architecture employs an unusual cribwork of granite slabs to adapt to the conditions in the channel, allowing swift tidal currents to flow through the structure. The bridge is one of two of its kind ever constructed and the only one left in the world, the Anchor reported Feb. 1.

"The Cribstone Bridge is a wonderful icon in the state, and the fact that it has survived and performed beautifully over the years was very influential to us," Mansfield said. "It embodied so much of what we were very interested in and cared about."

David and Barbara Roux, founders of the Roux Institute, selected CambridgeSeven's design as the winning submission. The Rouxs, who have a home in Harpswell, previously worked with the Cambridge, Mass.-based firm to design the Roux Center for the Environment at Bowdoin College.

Northeastern University's main campus is located in Boston. Its Roux Institute is a graduate program created to "educate generations of local talent for the digital, artificial intelligence, and life sciences sectors, and drive sustained economic growth in northern New England," according to Northeastern Global News.

When it opened in 2020, Portland's Roux Institute leased space in the Wex building on Fore Street. The new campus will be on the site of the former B&M Baked Beans plant on the east side of the city.

Old Bridge's Look to ‘Come Alive' at Modern Building

Mansfield said the Cribstone Bridge's influence will "come alive" in the design for the 245,000-sq.-ft. Alfond Center in both a physical and metaphorical way. The building borrows its name from the Harold Alfond Foundation, a major supporter of the project.

"We took the idea of the bridge metaphorically, as the institute is bridging technologies, bridging education, all the notions of bridging in that form," he said.

One of the Alfond Center's design features is an opening called "The Portal" that reflects the opening in the Cribstone Bridge. In Portland, The Portal will become a gathering space with seating, as well as a place for lectures, conferences, meetings, and more.

In addition, Mansfield described the Alfond Center's "curvilinear" design as "billowing out to Casco Bay."

The building itself will include "computational academic spaces, life science labs, and advanced active-learning classrooms," according to Boston Real Estate Times, and another structure will serve as an incubator for young companies, as well as a coastal path, parking garage, child care center, and green space.

Mansfield added that the Alfond Center will be all-electric, with power coming from geothermal wells, and said it is "absolutely paramount" that its design is sustainable.

To that end, the building will incorporate a three-story section built with mass timber, an emerging sustainable construction material. And, like the Cribstone Bridge, it will use Maine granite — in this case, Freshwater Pearl granite quarried in Frankfort, a town on the Penobscot River in Waldo County.

Construction broke ground at the Portland site this past September and is expected to be complete by Fall 2027.

The first step has been constructing the geothermal wells and the foundation, which is the hardest part, Mansfield said. Next, steel will begin to rise, and the building will take form.

"Portland is a vibrant, forward-looking city with this amazing history, [and] we don't want to lose the history at all, but we also want to embrace the future," he explained. "The Roux Institute is bridging that, which is another relationship to the Cribstone Bridge. We're bridging the past to the future."




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