A riverside clubhouse and rowing school sited on Wolf Point peninsula celebrates the legacy of the Chicago River. The river links the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and has remained the aqueous spine of the city until the present day. Famous for defying laws of hydrology when made to flow backwards in 1900, and lying frozen and unnavigable for up to five months a year, it acts as a reader for the environmental state of the city. This project explores notions of generative architectural decay. It sets out to challenge how we might build in such exposed site conditions, and to define an algorithmically led design methodology learning from these seemingly unstable scenarios. The result is a series of innovative spatial and material negotiations between water and land. The dual programme and hybrid structural strategy, combining timber frame and carbon-fibre elements with highly bespoke detailed connectors, creates a community building distinct from the surrounding corporate glass and steel metropolis.