Flood Houses Of The Future – Winners Announced
Floating homes, sunken pontoons and timber drawbridges are just some of the innovations presented by architects across the world in a bid to design a flood proof house for the future.
The competition launched by Norwich Union in July 2008, with the support of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), aimed to see how architects would tackle the problem of building on flood plains in a liveable, workable and insurable way.
A total of 85 entrants from across the globe delivered plans for a family home and garden, that would form part of a larger residential development situated on a flood plain.
The Judging Process
The judges met in London on 30th September to make an initial assessment of the schemes and identify a longlist for further consideration.
It emerged that three basic design strategies to mitigate the flood risk were evident :
• firstly to raise the house and sometimes also the surroundings above the flood level;
• secondly to allow part or all of the house to float in the event of a flood;
• thirdly to try to prevent the water from entering the house and/or to accept that water might enter the house, arranging the layout to allow continuous use and designing the interior to be resilient.
Following the first day of judging the panel had eliminated a total of 60 schemes leaving 25 still under consideration.
The 25 selected entrants can be seen on the Flood Design Competition website: www.flooddesigncompetition.co.uk.
A panel of judges, from across the architectural and insurance industry, have selected four overall winners. Today in a special reception at the Thames Gateway Forum, each will receive their £3,500 prize money from Robert Napier, Chair of the Government’s newly-formed Homes and Communities Agency.
“We were looking for innovative real-life solutions to what is an ever increasing threat to all of us,” said Simon Black, head of flood mapping at Norwich Union.
“Clearly we would rather homes weren’t built on flood plains, but we have to be realistic – with the Government planning to build three million new homes by 2020 there is a real likelihood this will happen. So how do we build homes that balance development needs with environmental change? This was the challenge and the results show excellent potential for homes of the future.”
The four winners are:
* Nissen Adams LLP based in London
* Eleena Jamil Architects – based in Malaysia
* Pohkit Goh – based in Edinburgh
* Hopper Howe Sadler – based in Newcastle
While presenting some unique new ideas from timber-skinned glass living rooms, to concrete dados and roof gardens to raised footpaths, three main solutions were evident throughout the entries: Raising properties and their surroundings above ground level, allowing part or all of the house to float in the event of a flood and allowing the continuous use of a property if water does enter the home.
Sunand Prasad, RIBA President, said, “It has been fascinating and instructive for the RIBA together with Norwich Union to explore how design-led solutions can respond to the flooding challenge.
“Reducing the risk of flooding does not begin and end with concrete walls and buildings on stilts, as the results of the competition show. Good design lies at the heart of creating communities that are more resilient against flooding, of lessening the cost caused by flooding when it does occur and of minimising the impact it has on local livelihoods and safety. The variety of the approaches demonstrated by the entrants shows the enormous potential of design-led solutions.”
Norwich Union and the RIBA will now present the winning ideas to developers and town and country planners in the hope that it will stimulate new ideas and solutions on how to deal with homes and flood risk.
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We canadians have resolved this issue 25 years ago. To us, the surface of the water is Real Estate. The only difference is it has a special foundation condition.
We have similiar situation in Australia
Great post, I love this blog.
A few years ago it occurred to me that if you hit a slab sided structure with the high powered force of fast travelling water it will quite simply destroy it, as we are now seeing with Tsunamis. It’s ok building all these lovely floating structures that rise above the ground and float on the flood. Yeah, right!! So whats going to happen to these wonderful buildings when a tsunami hits. “oh we don’t get tsunamis here”, they say. And look what happens to those complacent ones.
If we look at; for example, huts in Africa. These are built to suit the surrounding areas they inhabit. Ones that are found in high flood areas are not just built on raised platforms to get away from the threats of the land like wild animals as well as the weather but also these platforms/houses are built on stilts constructed at a 45% angle to the vertical.
I’ve built some test structures in my garden using all kinds of junk etc and every single one stands up to more abuse than a structure built around 90%, in other words, a box. If a structure can be made to look like a cube, it can be made like a triangle.
The other advantage to this shape is the upward and downward wind vortices that can be created for vertical vane wind turbines on individual structures.
We need to be concentrating on adapting our building designs that are functional rather than aesthetically identical to every other new design out there.
For those of you creative types out there, build a raised house with 45% supports on its own base with pontoons underneath that, tied down with anchors that work like retractable dog leads.
Come on Architect type people, build something that’ll work and not just look good.
Aidy Madd
someone should give that ady mad a job he seems to know wot hes talkin about