Water, water, everywhere...
OR,All I want for Christmas is an amphibious house...
If this monsoon crap keeps up, fair Helen is going to be doing the back stroke up the Gulf of Mexico come November. Well it serves me right I guess. This is what I get for choosing the goddess of foul weather as my totem. So, no whining for me. I'll just have to deal. To that end, I've decided to take steps. Something along the lines of the "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" philosophy. That's right, no New Orleans style drowned abode for me. dorna! wants, no requires, a house that swims. Now, I can hear the usual snickering; but y'all should know by now that I do my research. The thing can be done.
The Dutch are gearing up for climate change with amphibious houses. If rivers rise above their banks, the houses simply rise upwards as well. Such innovation could be good news for hurricane and flood-stunned America.Screw "flood-stunned America" y'all have FEMA! Yes, well - hmmm... Okay, granted, that may not be something to crow about these days; but, I'm on a freaking island here. Comprendez? No evacuation for me!
...The Netherlands' first amphibious houses. The cellar, in this case, is not built into the earth. Instead, it is on a platform - and is much more than a mere storage room. The hollow foundation of each house works in the same way as the hull of a ship, buoying the structure up above water. To prevent the swimming houses from floating away, they slide up two broad steel posts - and as the water level sinks, so they sink back down again.
So here's my pitch. Instead of international aid agencies pouring monies for 'disaster mitigation seminars' (read 'fifteen guys in a conference room, having brunch') and the usual apparatchik infested tripe down the piss hole; help us build a few thousand of these. I'm available for beta-testing.
To read the entire Spiegel article sans my fevered asides, click HERE. (Floating house graphic from Waterstudio.NL)
Filed in: architecture housing innovation netherlands
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