A speculative design, at the scale of both a single dwelling and an infrastuctural masterplan, that offers workable design solutions to the pressing issue of building in flood risk areas.

Drawing upon our prior experience of building in flood-risk areas, we believe that solutions at the scale of a dwelling must be complemented by solutions at the scale of infrastructure and policy. ‘Ark House’ is a prototype semi detached home envisaged within the context of larger infrastructures, such that the various levels of potential flood are coped with not a hundred times by a hundred dwellings, but once with infrastructure and dwelling working together.

The home is raised beyond anticipated inundation levels with its territory gently sloping away to the front and rear. Threaded through this earth and concrete ‘bund’ are a series of water channels, collection chambers, a borehole, reed beds, and a broad dike to the rear with a series of walls and hedges above. Water is thereby managed rather than displaced and the home is not compromised.

The bund rises to a waist-high datum within the house interior, providing durable living spaces in the event of the most serious inundations. From this solid base, a lightweight timber house rises, maximising daylight through a three-storey light well at the home’s core, and incorporating a generous raised terrace. Energy supplies are brought in at first floor level and fed down. The servicing of the home, which relies on renewable technology, is particularly directed towards self-sufficient occupation, whilst also supplementing district street lighting systems.

The landscape generated by our design is richly planted with species suitable for a saturated soil or water: a public realm that celebrates its flood-prone setting and is not constrained by it.