Floating

What Makes it Float?
By: Brad Hoepfner 

If you are keeping up on reading these blogs week after week, hopefully you will have seen by now that I am working with architecture that is amphibious. Specifically, looking at architecture that is on land the majority of its life but when the Mississippi River floods, the home will be able to rise with the water and remains undamaged. So it is important to think about what types of technology can be used to achieve this floating and choosing or creating a technology that would work for the region of Southern Illinois specifically.

Of course, there are many examples of architecture that is floating the majority of their lives. For example, boat homes are seen around the world and can vary in size and type but they are typically larger boats with an enclosure and are docked at a port and don’t move. Some of the floating homes I have come across use a pontoon strategy, this can be described as using two or more pontoons, or light-weight floating metal tubes filled with air, that have an extremely high buoyancy. Some areas around the world deal with wet and dry seasons and it allows the homes to be built upon stilts, which boosts the home far above the earth during the dry season, but allows the homes to rest on top of the rising water. Now we are starting to see more and more solutions using these technologies in different forms. One of these technologies involves using a light-weight concrete air filled foundation that will give a larger home some buoyancy, but to keep the home from moving they use guide posts within the structure of the home. This strategy also allows the home to have a basement and to be partially underground.

So for me, the next few weeks will become more about deciding what technology I want to use in Southern Illinois to solve this great floating problem and on top of that taking in consideration earthquakes and tornadoes.