Instead of trying to beat back rising water levels, these innovative structures work with them, adapting from land-based to floating houses with the ease of an amphibian. From a do-it-yourself foam-based flotation system on a modest home in Louisiana to high-tech, self-sustaining disaster pods, these buildings are ready for whatever Mother Nature might throw their way - even 10-foot floodwaters.
1. The UK’s First Amphibious House
Located on the Thames River, the UK’s first amphibious house is nearing completion. Baca Architects designed the home for a couple who wanted to live on a flood-prone island in the river, integrating a terraced landscape that acts as an early warning system that the waters are rising.
The terraces will fill with water before the ‘wet dock’ under the house does, and then the home itself will gently rise to stay above the surface.
2. Foundations That Float Above Floods
The Buoyant Foundation Project has come up with a solution to retrofit existing homes in post-Katrina New Orleans in anticipation of future storms and floods, allowing the structures to lift off the ground in an emergency. Buoyancy blocks would be installed beneath the sub-frame of the home, while four corner guideposts keep the building in place as it rises with the water.
3. Amphibious Communities for Thailand
Flooding in Thailand gets worse with each passing year, now occurring in off-seasons and in areas that haven’t historically been flood-prone. Site-Specific looks to the nation’s past for an answer, in the form of homes that were built as rafts.
This idea can be adapted even to communities that aren’t built directly on the water in the form of amphibious homes built over trenches, which fill with water first, raising the structures as the water rises. The entire prefabricated steel flotation system is hidden in the trench beneath the house during the dry seasons.
4. New Orleans Home Will Break Free & Float in Case of Flooding
New Orleans design firm Morphosis, which has designed many of the city’s most innovative post-Katrina architecture, came up with a home that will rise up on the surface of the water in the event of flooding but remain tethered to vertical guides.
Sponsored by Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation, the house uses the region’s classic narrow shotgun house typology and adapts it for the realities of the present time.
5. Affordable Floating Bamboo House for Flood-Prone Areas
This stunning and highly affordable modular bamboo house is a prototype that could potentially be mass-produced for areas of the world that are highly prone to flooding.
The design is made of renewable local materials like bamboo and coconut leaf, can be constructed within 25 days with limited experience, and uses simple fastening techniques. The finished design floats in flood waters up to three meters high.
6. Inexpensive Do-It-Yourself Floating House in Mississippi
The owners of this modest home on the Mississippi River came up with their own low-cost version of some of the other ideas featured on this list, using foam blocks for buoyancy and steel guide posts to keep it in place.
7. Tsunami Ark: Flood-Proof Floating Wood Capsule
A former Facebook and Paypal employee with no prior construction experience spent two years building ‘Tsunamiball,’ a flood-proof floating wood capsule.
Inspired to create the structure after meeting his wife in Fukushima, the Japanese city that was devastated by a tsunami and subsequent nuclear meltdown after an earthquake in 2011, Chris Robinson created a 22-foot-long, 10-foot-wide, 8.5-foot-high capsule out of plywood and epoxy.
8. Spherical Prefab Disaster-Proof Pod Home
It may not be much to look at from the outside, but this hardcore survival home could theoretically get you through just about anything.
Built on stilts, the 2500-square-foot house features a spiral staircase that doubles as a hydroponic garden as well as a roof-mounted wind turbine and solar panels. The home would be sold as prefabricated kits for around $78,000 each.
9. The Amphibious Home by Juan Castanos
Architect Juan Castanos envisions self-sustaining amphibious cities starting with this amphibious house design, which rises with flood waters, but remains stationary.
During an emergency, the house can become entirely self-sufficient, producing its own electricity, water and sewer supply along with a garbage compacter. The houses would be prefabricated in economically depressed areas of the United States.
10. Solar Powered Floating School in Nigeria
Residents of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria have been building houses on stilts for generations, going from one strutter to the other via canoe. As sea levels rise, officials threaten to tear down the entire community, leaving 250,000 people looking for a new place to leave.
Architect Kunle Adeyemi sees a solution in floating structures with improved sanitation features. The first completed example is a three-story solar-powered floating school with its own rainwater harvesting system that was completed for under US$7,000.
11 & 12. Amphibious Houses for the Netherlands
Unlike houseboats, these amphibious dwellings by DuraVermeer and WaterStudio in the Netherlands are being constructed on solid ground.
They’ll only float in floodwaters rise high enough to require it. Constructed of lightweight wood with a hollow concrete base that provides buoyancy, the houses are tethered to 15-foot-long mooring posts with sliding rings.
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