Matthew Butcher’s Flood House is a nomadic building, a practical study with inevitable poetic implications. Not a traditional floating home, but a mobile laboratory incorporating a home, for studying and monitoring life on the water and local environmental conditions in areas which are increasingly vulnerable to flooding.
Studying the conditions of life on the water and monitoring local environmental conditions in areas which are increasingly vulnerable to risk of flood are the purposes of the prototype Flood House designed by Matthew Butcher, designer ad instructor at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Flood House is not a traditional floating house or a construction that occasionally rests on the water, but a nomadic building which establishes relationships sensitive to the environmental conditions around it. This mobile laboratory and home was moored at various sites on the Thames and in the estuary where the river flows into the North Sea until May 14 2016, collecting data on seasonal flooding, tides and climate change. The Flood House measures 5.5 metres by 7.5 metres, and its simple lines are inspired by fishing huts and other structures along the banks of the river. It floats on three steel pontoons and has no engines; it is pulled from place to place by a tug boat. A series of initiatives and events organised by Matthew Butcher, Jes Fernie and the Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea accompanied the Flood House in its mission, including a wind vane made by artist Ruth Ewan for the roof of the house.
(Agnese Bifulco)
Designer: Matthew Butcher
Artist and writer: Ruth Ewan and Joanna Quinn
Curators: Jes Fernie and Focal Point Gallery
Fabricators: B-Made at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL; Greens Weathervanes
Focal Point Gallery staff: Joe Hill, Sharon Byrne, Hayley Dixon
Environmental design and engineering: Rokia Raslan and Jonathon Taylor, UCL Institute for Environmental Design & Engineering
Structural engineering: Tim Lucas, UCL
Naval architecture and stability assessments: Ema Muk-Pavic and Rachel Pawling, UCL
Graphic design: Mark El-khatib
Web development: SB-PH (Sam Baldwin & Piper Haywood)
Photos: Brotherton-Lock, Jason Coe
Images: © Matthew Butcher. Courtesy Matthew Butcher
http://flood.house/
