A 'Sea Change' in Architecture: Floating Houses

There is a theory that life on Earth originated from a primordial soup. It is beginning to look as if we might come full circle, as climate change results in rising sea levels; as well as frequent, intense earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons, and floods.

Now, a European project, initiated in the Netherlands, has found, aptly enough, a “solution” to the problem: floating, or amphibious, houses.

Depending on their geographical situation, some countries are more advanced than others in their adjustment to the effects of global warming and, particularly, to the rising level of the seas. The “low countries” in Europe, including the Netherlands, is among them.

In 1953, the Netherlands and large parts of Belgium and England were struck by what is known as the Watersnoodramp, literally, “flood disaster,” destroying 10,000 buildings and killing over 2,500 people. Since then, the “low countries” have developed a culture of flood engineering that has sealed the reputation of its builders and might help to fight the consequences of rising sea levels due to climate change.  

 The results of FLOATEC, a research and development (R&D) project underwritten by EUREKA – an alliance of European nations that supports innovation and state-of-the-art technologies – can be found all over Europe, but the Netherlands is the primary market.

The leading partner in the EUREKA FLOATEC project, Dura Vermeer, is a Rotterdam-based company specializing in building homes in a country where many would consider buying a houseboat. With a staff of more than 3,000, over the past 12 years, this company has become an outright leader in a market that barely existed before – floating buildings. The company’s revolutionary achievements to date include the Rotterdam City Harbor “Rijnhaven”, floating exhibition pavilion, a greenhouse built on water, and the amphibious village in Maasbommel, all located in the Netherlands.

 “FLOATEC had the full backing of the Dutch government,” said Edwin Blom, project leader at Dura Vermeer. “The authorities designated some areas of the country as preferred grounds for experimentation on amphibian houses.” The project also benefited [from] a unique legal obligation existing in the Netherlands: Seven percent to 12 percent of every construction site is to be dedicated to water storage, which makes floating houses also very convenient.

So, how do you build a floating house? Blom describes it as a relatively easy construction process: The secret lies in the foundations of the building, made of multiple layers of light plastic foam supporting the concrete, allowing it to float the same way a boat would.

But the technology used until now has had its limitations. There is a maximum size and weight beyond which a structure loses its buoyancy and simply sinks. The engineers from Dura Vermeer had to look for a technological partner able to solve this problem, the key being in the use and development of the right type of material.

There was not a collaborator in the Netherlands with the level of skill and innovation required. However, thanks to the network of European R&D experts offered by EUREKA, Dura Vermeer was able to find Acciona Infrastructures, a Madrid-based company and a forerunner in the sector of nanotechnology-based composite materials.

Whereas most of the research done in the sector has been oriented toward lucrative high-tech sectors, such as aerospace or the military, Acciona Infrastructures has been from the very start looking to adapt their knowledge to the needs of the construction business. ‘We would not have even thought of this market opportunity if we did not take part in this EUREKA project’ says Bladimir Osorio, project leader at Acciona Infrastructures.

Together with the engineering consultancy, Solintel, also based in Madrid, the partners worked on a new way to build floating structures – simpler, more solid, and using lighter materials. This new building method uses EPS, or expanded polystyrene, “the same kind as is used for packaging and which people are familiar with as’ little white balls glued together,” explained Blom. The modified polystyrene is inserted in multiple layers in between stratums of composite and concrete; and divided into beam-like modules that can easily be assembled into a bigger supporting structure, “a bit like building blocks.” The modules are arranged in a floating grid into which the concrete is cast.

Not only is the technology much more advanced than the one traditionally used, but it is also much less expensive: “We simply do not need to use as much material as we used to,” said Blom. “Smaller blocks can now support bigger structures and, in the end, the cost of the whole building is reduced.”

 For his Spanish counterpart Osorio, the project was “a real technological breakthrough that would never have been possible without EUREKA.”

 It could be a technology of great interest, both in the Western world and in some small island states in the Indian and Pacific Oceans where climate change poses even more of a threat: Some of them may completely disappear within the next 100 years. According to Jenny Grote Stoutenburg, a researcher in law from the Munich-based Max Planck Institute, “If a threatened island managed to keep an artificial, floating structure, occupied by caretakers, it could probably maintain its claim to statehood.”

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