Foster + Partners have revealed a new design for a timber boathouse on the Harlem River in New York. Sited in Sherman Creek Park, the design was made for non-profit Row New York. The proposed boathouse seeks to expand Row New York’s free and low-cost programs that teach young people in under-resourced communities the sport of competitive rowing, while also assisting them with their education to prepare them for higher education and a path to college.
Whether lining a river bustling with rowing crews or sitting calmly at the edge of a lake, boathouses have a storied history and an inexplicable romance to match their unusual program. Designed for use as a training facility for elite rowers, a vacationer’s waterfront playground, shoreline retreat, or even as a historical preservation project, boathouses captivate the imagination as they transcend the limits of the land-form relationship on their site.