MYSTIC RIVER BOATHOUSE

The Mystic River Boathouse reclaims a former industrial site and offers community-wide access to the Mystic River, while creating a gateway to the Mystic Seaport’s maritime museum collection of sailing ships, boats, and buildings that house related crafts.

The design takes aesthetic cues from the triangular geometry and ephemeral transparency of the shrouds of nearby tall ships. Organized as a series of repetitive, origami-like folds, the building’s skin evokes the biometrics of rowing and its fleeting punctuations in the fluid medium of the river. Materially, the use of perforated weathering steel draws on the color and palpability of the brick industrial buildings across the street, against which the boathouse forms a legible threshold along the main thoroughfare into the town.

The project creates a visually porous connection between the River and its urban surroundings, inviting the public to and through the new facility.