Designer creates a house that will float when caught up in floodwater

Just gather two of each kind of animal.../snark

(MNN)- London-based Baca Architects — a soggy-minded architectural firm that’s worked on projects in two particularly flood-prone areas, The Netherlands and New Orleans — has received permission by the Environment Agency to construct the U.K’s very first amphibious home on a small island situated on the River Thames in historic Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

Designed to, as World Architecture News puts it, “respond to the uncertainties of future climate change,” the three-bedroom, timber-framed contemporary home measuring 2,400-square feet is an intriguing work of green home design — features include high levels of insulation and high-performance glazed windows — never mind the fact that when the Thames, located just 30-odd feet away, runneth over, the residence transforms into a free-floating pontoon, rising up to nine feet from its fixed foundations and floating atop the floodwaters. The home is anchored in its reinforced concrete dock by four permanent vertical guideposts normally found at your run-of-the-mill marina called dolphins. I guess you could think of the home, when in flood-mode, as a houseboat that doesn't go anywhere. Keep on reading...