PMA Magazine

The mass timber in the winning design nods to the region’s history of lumber production while gesturing to a future of “environmental stewardship”, positioning Portland’s cultural producers as leaders in sustainability awareness.

The themes of accessibility, equity, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability were central to the design brief, as the competition aimed to push designers to imagine a new type of museum, one that makes art accessible to all.

The concept materializes as a timber extension with a curved roof that reaches for the sun and generous glazing that offers captivating reflections provides ample indoor illumination and encourages visual connectivity.

The Portland Museum of Art (PMA) in Maine’s largest city has selected LEVER Architecture as the winner of the prestigious worldwide competition to design the PMA’s expansion.

PMA director Mark Bessire sat down with News Center Maine’s Rob Caldwell to discuss the winning design.

LEVER Architecture has been named the winner in the much-heralded international competition to design an expansion of the Portland Museum of Art (PMA) in Maine’s largest city.

The new wing, which will double the current size of the museum, could also include a rooftop restaurant, sculpture park and event space with views of Portland and Casco Bay.

LEVER Architecture, a Portland, Oregon­–founded architectural practice that’s garnered national praise for its pioneering embrace of mass-timber construction, is heading to the other Portland—the similarly forest-flanked one in Maine—for a $100 million revamp of that city’s most venerable public art institution.

LEVER’s scheme doesn’t just expand the museum an additional 60,000 square feet offering more public and gallery space: It will also unify the campus, currently marked by four disparate structures built in different centuries in varying architectural styles.