Morphosis Architects recently completed the first floating house for Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation in New Orleans. The amazingly fresh thing about the FLOAT House is that it is a flood-safe sustainable house that floats, itself, securely with rising water levels. The homes will be built for thos that have lived in the Lower 9th Ward before Hurricane Katrina struck the area in August 2005. The floating house technology was developed in the Netherlands. In case of a flood, the base of the house acts as a raft, allowing the home to rise on guide posts up to 3.6 meters as water levels rise.
So, it my seem as though I am flaunting the school I attend, but I am NOT! However, the home was shipped in pieces from Los Angeles, where it had been constructed on UCLA’s campus. The FLOAT home was designed by Morphosis Architects under the direction of Thom Mayne, a professor at UCLA. It took about two years to design and build the house. There is a current push for mass production of the homes within flood-areas throughout the south. To date, more than a dozen homes are being occupied and another 20 are under construction.
