Architecture: lottery winners and losers

It is, after all, a lottery. With what other truism can the River and Rowing Museum Foundation comfort themselves today as they contemplate a pounds 4m hole in their plans to celebrate the jolly boating life?

Work is almost complete on the museum building at Henley, the Thameside home of rowing. Designed by David Chipperfield, the modern, timber-clad "upturned boat" building has won acclaim and may have helped the architect secure his major commission to design the pounds 100m Neues Museum for Berlin.

The HLF does not disclose why it rejects particular applications but said the museum sector was "heavily oversubscribed". Jonathan Bryant, the museum chief executive, said: "We certainly felt down but are definitely not out. We have to make every effort to secure other funds to open this museum during 1998 as planned."

The museum's collection is taking shape, and includes the 1874 Thames steam launch Eva, a 2,000-year old log boat and the coxless pair in which Olympic champions Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent won gold at the 1996 Atlanta games.

Included among the HLF winners were 41 churches and places of worship, which together got pounds 3.5m towards restoration. Banbury Museum, Oxfordshire, is to get pounds 2.2m for purpose-built galleries; Abbey House Museum, Leeds, will get pounds 1.6m to conserve the medieval gateway of Kirkstall Abbey while adding a new gallery; pounds 800,000 will help restore the historic Brooklands Motoring Village in Surrey; and pounds 16m towards Sir Norman Foster's Great Court Scheme at the British Museum was re-confirmed.

Money was also promised "in principle" to projects including the new National Maritime Museum Cornwall on the waterfront at Falmouth. Architects Long & Kentish, in collaboration with exhibition designers Land Design Studios, plan a building with "its feet in the harbour" allowing the tide and wind into the galleries.