Baca completes amphibious house on the River Thames

This video shows the UK's "first amphibious house" by Baca Architects, which is located on the banks of the River Thames in Marlow, Buckinghamshire and has just been completed.
Baca Architect's Richard Coutts and Robert Barker designed Formosa for an island in the middle of the River Thames.
Faced with building on a site prone to unpredictable flooding, the architects set about creating a design that could mitigate the risk of interior flooding.
The result is a building that sits on fixed but separate foundations - like a shipping dock - so that when the Thames bursts its banks the structure will float above water level.
This defence mechanism can cope with up to 2.5 metres of floodwater - well above projected flood levels for the area. Four guide posts control and and support the movement.
The house was nearing the end of its construction in late 2014, but is now complete and float tested.
"With flooding become a regular occurrence in the UK and elsewhere isn't it time we started to learn to live with it?" said Coutts and Barker.
"Scientists appear to agree that the sort of weather we have seen over the last few weeks is likely to become much more prevalent," they added. "If this is the case then maybe we need to be a bit more pro-active in building in measures to cope with flooding if it does occur rather than hoping that the flood defences will protect people."
The house is covered in shiny zinc shingles and has glazed gable that faces the Thames and a small ramped garden that slopes up from the edge of the river and is designed to act as an early flood warning.
Every few years the dock will be pumped fill of water to test the movement, as the site does not flood on a regular occurrence.
The property has a pitched roof to complement the irregular roofline of neighbouring homes and an overall footprint that is no larger than the old demolished property.
The house is plumbed with flexible pipes that can stretch by up to 3 metres as the house floats, allowing the residents to continue as much as possible with everyday life.
Coutts and Barker have long been advocates for floating architecture, recently winning an NLA ideas competition to deploy small prefabricated houses on London's disused waterways.
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[@lurleanhunt9335]

We need you to educate our architects and urban developers here in Houston, Texas. It is absolutely time that we change how we think about building in our city and surrounding areas.

[@saintetienne755]

And when it floods the house is sitting in a swimming pool of foul smelling detritus no doubt which will need to be pumped out. And then there's the leaves and twigs and dead fish etc trapped underneath.

[@_HenS_]

Amphibious house? Or just a big-standard houseboat in a dry/wetdock?

[@morrisdavidmullings9833]

This house was on Grand Designs

[@fikrybani2949]

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[@jeanettedevereux7664]

☀️👍

[@Kaci]

i saw that house

[@ramigarfan6123]

زي بيتنا

[@irfandihacker3699]

please make me in indonesia

[@raywilson3166]

I'm not convinced. I think it's something to do with it looking like a big barn and the wanky young architect who is talking at the end about a house that has "adapted to the future already" or something

[@jdhami7801]

Benjy fishy lives near here

[@saintetienne755]

A gimmick rather than necessary solution? If it's allowed to float to a certain height then why not build on stilts to the same height? Is this not over complicating an issue?

[@wibblewobble489]

The basement they created by making it in the dry dock, gave them a whole new room. If they put it on stilts they'd have only have the house's actual flooring to live in.

[@saintetienne755]

I remember seeing this on Grand Designs - the area under the house is a crawl space and not a room and they had problems with the house floating at an angle. The area under stilts could be used for parking then if there's a flood the cars can be moved.

[@brojack101]

@@saintetienne755 you are completely wrong. I literally just watched the episode and the house never had any issues going up and down. And the bottom area was definitely a basement

[@saintetienne755]

You must have watched something different to me

[@windyhawthorn7387]

Different building codes in different areas. This style of amphibious house wasn't unique it was based on houses being built in Holland I do believe.
The whole idea is to keep the house dry and the people inside safe for when there is a flood. And part of the reason this was chosen instead of stilts is that even an house on stilts can flood if you didn't build it high enough. Because this building floats and how it's anchored it is hoped that the house will always be dry and high enough for any flood small or big.