X.C STUDIO
X.C STUDIO
A boathouse on the Harlem River for a college rowing team, the neighbourhood around it, and a small museum of the sport — under one folded metal roof.
The college crews need boat bays and a training floor; the neighbourhood needs a library, a pool and rooms to gather; the sport deserves a place to tell its history. The building stacks all three under a single roof.
The roof does more than cover. Folded from one sheet, it comes down to become wall and rises again to become ceiling, so there is no line where one ends and the other begins.
The folds come from the site: the bank slopes down to the water in a series of terraces, and the roof follows them, like a hull turned over.
The same move repeats at every scale, from the roofline to the stair to the reading steps in the library. The project began as research into folding in architecture, and became a building that is made of it.
One sheet, folded, becomes a roof, a wall, and a way down to the water.
