maine lighthouses inspire safdie architects with new portland district

A Beacon in the Old Port

Safdie Architects’ design for Old Port Square in Portland, Maine begins with a question: how can a tall building belong in a low-rise, historic city? The answer comes in the form of a beacon — an architectural gesture rooted in the region’s maritime lineage. Rising 380 feet at 45 Union Street, the slender tower recalls Maine’s lighthouses, reinterpreted in glass, timber, and stone. Designed in collaboration with local developer East Brown Cow, the project aims not to rethread the urban fabric, long frayed by midcentury urban renewal.

The proposal is less about a single structure and more about the reassembly of a neighborhood. Encompassing four acres in the heart of the Old Port district, the masterplan introduces residences, hospitality, retail, and cultural spaces, while rehabilitating existing buildings and weaving new pedestrian paths into the historic grid. A timber-and-glass pavilion at 55 Union Street marks the western threshold, while a vaulted rooftop sky lobby crowns the tower, framing expansive views of Casco Bay and the White Mountains.

visualizations courtesy Safdie Architects

A Mixed-Use Vertical Neighborhood by Safdie architects

Safdie Architects’ tower draws on the visual weight and materiality of the 19th-century architecture across Portland, Maine. Its base is transparent and porous, with a 33-foot-high glazed plinth hosting dual lobbies and a café that spills into the square. Raised on pilotis, the building is both grounded and open, creating permeability at the pedestrian level. The palette and proportions echo the adjacent brick warehouses and cobbled streets, while the structure above shifts into lighter tones and forms, culminating in a vaulted lantern that nods to the lighthouse metaphor without replicating it.

The architects organize the development as a stacked sequence of programmatic layers. A 90-room hotel occupies the first nine floors above the base, followed by 14 levels of residences offering one- and two-bedroom layouts. The uppermost floors introduce a public-facing realm, a sky lobby and restaurant nested beneath a vaulted timber ceiling. This layering of uses mirrors the diversity of the surrounding city block, inviting a mix of residents, visitors, and locals into a shared vertical neighborhood.

Safdie Architects unveils plans for Old Port Square in Portland, Maine

Extending the Urban Landscape of portland, maine

Safdie Architects’ vision for Portland, Maine does not end with the tower. Working closely with landscape architect Michael Boucher and graphic design firm Pentagram, the team has devised a comprehensive strategy for the public realm. The surrounding streetscape will be reimagined with outdoor dining terraces, upgraded pedestrian routes, and new storefronts that activate the street. An earlier phase — the renovation of the Fore Street Garage — already integrated solar panels, EV stations, and new retail frontage, signaling the project’s layered and adaptive approach.

A pavilion at 55 Union Street offers an intimate foil to the tower, with about 8,000 square feet of retail across two levels. A sculptural stair and vaulted wood roof canopy echo the formal vocabulary of the tower’s summit. Together, the two buildings create a dialog across the square, unified by shared material expression but scaled for varied urban experiences.

the project introduces a 30-story lighthouse-inspired tower

Safdie Architects’ work on Portland, Maine’s Old Port Square integrates preservation as a central theme. Beyond new construction, the project includes recent renovations of existing buildings at 200 and 220 Middle Street. These updates brought new glass storefronts, a grand staircase, and improved circulation — small moves that collectively restore continuity to a block once severed by demolition and disuse. The architecture is never stand-alone. It’s embedded in a longer arc of recovery and reinvention.

The development is part of a larger body of work that seeks to cultivate livable density. Known for projects such as Habitat 67 in Montreal and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, the firm consistently returns to ideas of connection, landscape integration, and civic accessibility.

Safdie Architects aims to repair urban fabric in Portland’s historic district