Kaiapoi House
A house built in 2018 in Kaiapoi, New Zealand, was designed to be amphibious as a solution to the flood and quake-prone site. The house is a single-storey, 140-square-meter rectangular home. The home’s buoyancy system is comprised of a catamaran pontoon, made of polystyrene, wrapped in a waterproof material, and sheathed in plywood. The design uses timber guidance posts around the perimeter of the home attached with a sleeve system to keep it in place as it rises and descends. The structure has been engineered to withstand water flows of up to 3m/s.
Ashby Consulting Engineering, a firm local to Christchurch, helped to create the site-specific design. Principal engineer Colin Ashby believes the amphibious design is a solution for not just flood-prone areas, but areas that could be subject to liquefaction as well. New Zealand is a quake-prone country, so consideration of both seismic and flood risks is equally important.
