Baumschlager & Eberle: multifunctional building, Rohner Port, Austria.

This is the third stage in a three-phase process that is seeing the gradual transformation of a former gravel pit on the coast of Lake Constance. Completed in 2000, an eight metre cantilevered concrete tube contains the port office, with elevated lakeside views. The second stage, completed in 2004, comprised the harbour itself, with a shore wall constructed in local stone that provides a sustainable habitat for animals, plants and other waterborne organisms. The third stage, illustrated here, provides the port with a multifunctional building that sits at the head of the harbour, containing a boat garage at low level and a function room above. The 14m high structure, that appears to rise directly out of the water, adopts an abstracted silhouette of surrounding trees that gives the 8.8m high clubroom a unique quality of dappled light. Externally the concrete superstructure is covered in what the architects describe as a glaze, which when struck by light appears to glisten in the changing daylight conditions. R.G.

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