The FLOAT House

This month’s unveiling of the FLOAT house has generated lots of coverage and questions.  The house designed and developed by Morphosis architects and graduate students at UCLA’s School of Architecture and Urban Design is the first floating house permitted in the United States and a perfect example of the kind of real world solutions we are working to advance at the Make It Right Foundation.

When Brad Pitt launched Make It Right, he promised the residents of the Lower 9th Ward that he would help them build back stronger, safer and better able to survive the next storm or flood.  The FLOAT House is helping us deliver on that promise.  For the first time, this house brings technology to Americans that was created to help save homes and speed recovery from a flood.  This house is a prototype for affordable, green housing that can be mass produced for flood-prone areas.The house can sustain its own water and power needs, survive floodwaters as high as 12 feet and be manufactured cheaply enough to function as low-income housing.

So how’s it work?  The base of the house has been reconceived as a chassis and it when it floods, the chassis acts as a raft, allowing the house to rise vertically on two guide posts found at the front and back of the house.

While the Morphosis floating house is the first to be permitted in the United States, the technology was developed and is in use in the Netherlands where architects and developers are working to address an increased demand for housing in the face of rising sea levels associated with climate change.

We believe it’s an approach and design that could and should be replicated all over our world. In a city, country and world threatened by increased flooding and more severe hurricanes caused by climate change, we need to embrace these kinds of solutions that will help us survive and thrive. As someone avidly interested in helping figure out how we can adapt to the consequences of a warming planet, I believe this kind of innovation is a great example of how the tragedy of Katrina can be turned into an opportunity to save New Orleans and other cities from the next storm.

Kim Haddow is the Communications Director for Make It Right and the co-author of Global Warming, Natural Hazards and Emergency Management, a collection of case studies of communities working to reduce their risk from natural disasters.

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Comments

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I love this idea and I wonder if it could work for historic homes. In New Orleans, we obviously don’t want to tear down our centuries-old homes. I would be interested in hearing about an old home whose foundation has been adapted with a float mechanism. That would be cool.

By Kathy Price-Robinson on December 16, 2009

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I think the float house is a great idea, its just like a jack up barge in the oil field waters. it should be able to work nicely as long as all utilities are allowed to float up with the house when waters rise. its what areas with histories of flooding have been needing for years. keep up the great job!

By sue strohmeyer million on January 3, 2010

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