HADDAD | DRUGAN

This bus shelter for Monument Square, Portland’s central civic space, was Portland Public Art's first built commission. The bus shelter is visually connected to a traditional Civil War monument, pointing to the city's past, while its soaring abstracted form acts as an icon of Portland's vibrant present and future.

The shelter is designed as a "jewel box." Its faceted surfaces are abstracted from features of Maine’s marine environment. The steel beams and anodized aluminum canopy are derived from a lobster shell. The cast iron wall panels have a pattern based on barnacles. The wall at the south end has individual panes of blue and holographic glass angled like waves. The wave wall picks up both sunlight and electric light in the way light scintillates across the surface of Portland’s Casco Bay.