VAN BUREN U.S. LAND PORT OF ENTRY

The Van Buren US Land Port of Entry design fuses an abstraction of the cultural and landscape context with concepts essential to port operations: surveillance and camouflage. The St. John River valley has roots in the Acadian culture, visible in Van Buren’s original town plat of long narrow plots oriented toward the river carved from the Maine forests. As the repetition of forest trees provides camouflage, a patterned repetition of joints, columns and mullions provide the officers with concealment combined with visual site surveillance. The building envelope is conceived as a taut wrapper of the simple building form. Warm colored walls add a glow to the interior spaces, enhancing visitor’s passage through the port while offering the officers a warm work environment in an often cold and hostile climate.