The Float House

Buckland were approached by Stella Rossa to work on an unusual project – a floating home.  

The family had lived on a barge for some time, but wanted to make their existing home larger to accommodate their family’s mobility needs. 

Because of where the home was situated, craning in a structure wasn’t possible, so they opted for designing a structure which would be created in situ and wouldn’t leave the water. 

Buckland were enlisted to provide the glulam frame around which the house would come to life. The commission was a series of small portal frames, designed to be fixed together on the 4m x 20m base on their barge boat. The glulam creates a series of structural forms, like ribs, which repeat the entire way down the structure. 

While the foundation was unusual in the fact that it was afloat, the structure itself was a fairly standard portal frame design. The main challenge was how the pieces were transported to the barge for installation and we could not do any pre assemby. This was achieved by transporting the glulam beams individually and all assembly took place on site. 

The resulting design floats on ten interlocking steel hull sections secured together by a gantry – this means each section can be floated away and lifted out for maintenance if needed.