Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Unveils House That Floats
Filed under: Featured, buildings and construction, cars-houses — Michael d'Estries @ 8:49 pm
October 5th 2009
We’re used to Brad Pitt’s green building foundation, Make It Right NOLA, revealing some new takes on sustainable design, but a house that floats when it floods? Now that’s something that truly raises the bar for sustainable and functional design in the face of adverse elements!
The home, which is the brainchild of Morphosis Architects and its founder, Thom Mayne, will officially be unveiled tomorrow in a ready to move-in condition for one family displaced by Hurricane Katrina. NPR had a sneak peek interview with Mayne this afternoon and shed a bit more light on how it all works. From the article,
The designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete. “What does that do? It produces a raft; it floats,” Mayne says. “And it’s thought about as a seat belt. I mean, hopefully it never gets used. But when it gets used, it’s important.” The house is anchored to the ground by two vertical guideposts. At times of flooding, the house moves up the guideposts — up to 12 feet — to prevent it from drifting.
According to the interview, when flooding occurs, the home easily breaks away from things like electric lines, plumbing, etc. so that it can travel up the 12-foot guideposts. It also contains enough batteries to keep everything running inside for up to three days. And, obviously, as this is a Make It Right home, is built using green materials and sustainable design. Check out some concept art of the home below — or visit Make It Right NOLA for more details on the greening effort in the Lower 9th Ward.
wow what more could you ask for! The people of MIR have done it again
smiles for them
That really is awesome. The only question is–would it be easy to return the home to ground level and reconnect to the utilities, and how many times can you use this function?
I guessing here — but I think having the vertical shafts make it easy for the home to settle in its original location. I don’t believe there’s much room for movement except vertically. How they handle the piping and electric connections is a different story — there must be some flexible give there?
As the designer mentioned, they’ve never tested this in real-world situation — only with computer simulations, so who knows how this might really in a hurricane. They’re confident it would make it through anything similar to Katrina.
My respect to everyone who converts his fame and fortune to something positively altruistic – even if it reads a bit like something from Jules Verne. (Much of what that guy dreamed up came true).
could it not be made more attractive? the architect talked about blending in with the community as a reason for not making it permanently above possible water surge, but this is not very homey looking….
So it’s a floating single wide trailer? This also looks like it was designed by a group of freshmen design students that did what ever they wanted with their own little section of the house.