British practice BACA beats the Dutch in their own waters

BACA's proposal for flood-resistant homes in the Netherlands

From left: floating home; amphibious home; flood-resilient home

London-based practice BACA has won a 20 million euro (£15 million) project to design flood-resistant homes in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, seeing off a host of Dutch hopefuls.

Kees Christiaanse Architects and Mecanoo were among the runners up in the competition to design 80-100 floating, amphibious and flood-resilient homes.

The floating units are single lightweight timber-frame houses built on buoyant platforms while the amphibious three-storey units rest on 'concrete buoyancy decks' which rise with flood water.

The resilient units have secondary decks above ground level that allow for escape during floods.

The scheme is due to complete in 2009.

Section showing normal conditions

Section showing one-in-1,000-year flooding