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Modular builder Modscape responds to climate change with modular built floating home concept.
With the effects of climate change more vivid every year, Melbourne-based modular builder Modscape’s in-house team of architects have designed a concept – aptly named the Floating House – to passively defend against rising flood waters. (main pic: Modscape floating house concept.)
Modular homes are optimally designed to move, and Modscape’s Floating House concept utilises this inherent advantage and, utilising fixed guiding piers, adapts to rise and fall with the fluctuation of water level.
Working from a first principles approach, the design team began by understanding the nature and dynamics of how areas can flood and how this translates into an adapted modular home design. They then designed a series of components to actively respond to the flood conditions.
“Defending neighbourhoods or individual homes with a levee style barrier is a traditional response which has been successful to a point,” observed Angus McKinnon, Modscape Architect.
“It is, however, a blanket-solution which requires a substantial infrastructure investment. The question for us was is there a more cost-effective, site-specific answer? Working passively with the rising waters – allowing the house to ‘float’ while the water passes underneath – presents as a solution with great potential.”
Services
Integrating service connections to a traversable building presents unique complexities that require a dynamic and flexible interface. Traditional static and rigid connection points need to be reconsidered within the constraints of authority and regulatory requirements, and this is where innovative design integrations are required to work around such complexities.
Whilst all the services within the house itself will be conventionally reticulated and connected, each service mains connection to the site building will entail its specific nuances.
The consideration of these services preserves the use and operation of the Floating House post-disaster flood events and ensures that both the property is retained and the functional use of the home is provided for minimal recovery works and quicker re-occupation of a functional residence.
Flood Attack level
A report by the Climate Council earlier this year found 1 in 25 homes was at risk of becoming uninsurable by 2030. In response to the report, Modscape’s design team worked on concepts, and it became increasingly apparent to the team that a wider discussion regarding how we plan and design for future homes in areas subject to flood-risk will become essential.
The success of responding to bushfires using a Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) rating system led their team to ponder if a similar system – a Flood Attack Level (FAL) – for dealing with potential threats of flooding to residential areas would be worthy of greater consideration.
A Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) is a means of measuring the severity of a building’s potential exposure to ember attack, radiant heat and direct flame contact. It is then used as the basis for the requirements for construction to improve protection of building elements from bushfire attack.
Flood maps and building standards need to be updated concurrently in order to accurately risk assess an area. As with bushfires, it’s impossible to avoid building altogether in all floodplains or flood zones, therefore developing homes that can be built to adequately cope with the environmental conditions is a necessary response. A FAL system would provide the basis for designing homes that are protected in these events.
In flooded Lismore NSW, the council, contractors, fire & rescue officers and defence personnel were collecting more than 1,000 tonnes of flood waste every day. A home designed to cope with the changing environment – such as a modular Floating House – may well offer asset protection to ensure a more sustainable future for flood prone areas.
