Two buildings for two kinds of time. A heavy concrete base for the work of rowing (boats, water, getting wet) and a light timber room above for everything after, lifted so it can lean out over the lake.
A rowing and paddling club on the shore of Lake Balboa
The boathouse is two stacked volumes. On the shore, a 24 metre board-formed concrete plinth holds the boat store: three bays that open through six-metre sliding timber doors straight onto a slipway into the lake, with changing rooms and a workshop behind them.
Resting across the plinth is a 30 metre bar clad in charred timber that holds the clubroom. It oversails the plinth by three metres toward the water, sheltering the slipway where crews launch, and cantilevers six metres east over the floating dock, ending in an all-glass lake room.
One continuous ribbon window runs almost the full length of the clubroom, so the whole room reads the lake as a single horizon. The roof of the boat store becomes a terrace behind the bar, reached by an external stair from the park.
Developed with AI-assisted design and visualization tools.
