Living on Water: Floating Homes

Over the years of hosting FuturArc Prize (an international design competition that focuses on Green architectural interventions in Asia), it has often been observed that a substantial number of ideas proposed—and increasingly so—were solutions for waterside communities or water-related concerns, regardless of what the cycle’s theme is about in terms of envisioning a sustainable future.

This is especially so for entrants from countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam, where water is inevitably tied to their climatic, cultural, geographical and socio-economic fabrics. Among the most popular architectural interventions proposed has been the floating house.

Here, we look at two examples of such an architectural typology to consider its practical applications and correlation with the larger environment and other hydrological systems. How would a floating house be designed and built for different aquatic locales and what would their interface with the water’s edge be like? How would it manage its internal plumbing processes and water needs? Are we ready to deploy them at scale so as to better prepare for inundation scenarios due to climate change? Or are we still prototyping to testbed different materials and ecosystems adaptabilities?

One is a floating house prototype that has been fashioned by a Vietnamese architect and his team in an attempt to address the impending issue of sea level rise and its impact on those living on water; and the other an actual floating house in the Netherlands—another country that is inextricably linked with water.

READ MORE: Floating Bamboo House

Floating Bamboo House by H&P Architects

The architect revealed that he started researching on his own in 2015, and seven years later, he was able to realise two Floating Bamboo (FB) House prototypes with the cooperation of two foundation bodies. One is the floating house model (FB House 2), while the other (FB House) seeks to demonstrate the adaptability of the structure on land and uneven terrain if and when the need arises. His aim was to create a floating house model for local Vietnamese living in river areas and whose livelihoods depend on the river, especially in the context of adapting to the scenario of […]

READ MORE: The Float

The Float by Studio RAP

“Water doesn’t just permeate through the lives of the Dutch people; it runs through the land itself: a fifth of the total surface area of the country consists of water. The Dutch relationship with water is one of balance, a matter of life and death.”2 With such an intricate relationship with water and a vast aquatic network, floating houses are commonplace in the Netherlands. This particular floating residence is a commissioned project that has been designed and constructed based on a private client’s request for it to be sustainably used along the canals in the historical city of Leiden. According […]

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