6 Modular Houseboat and Floating Home Manufacturers Around the World
By Michele Koh Morollo
Dwell
Sept.20.2017
If you’re bored of solid ground and want to try out a life on water, then these international companies will give you the tools you need to create your own floating home someplace new.
Take a look at the following six manufacturing companies across the globe that specialize in floating home design—and make sure to do your research to figure out all the pros, cons, rules, and regulations for this type of living.
No 1 Living – Czech Republic
Based in the Czech Republic, No 1 Living builds houseboats with an upper and lower deck and glazed interiors that take advantage of outdoor views. Founded in 2013, they offer two models of houseboats: the No1 Living 40-foot model and the larger No1 Living 47-foot model. Both are equipped with a kitchen, full bathroom, bedrooms, and generous storage space. The houses are built with durable, anticorrosion-protected steel and polyethylene-segmented floats, which guarantee excellent floatation.
Courtesy of No 1 Living
French company Farea manufactures floating homes that are certified as boats. This is important in France, as it means the houses are allowed in lakes, lagoons, and at sea. They’re about 915 square feet each and come with five twin cabins, three terraces, and a kitchen. The structures can produce their own water and electricity and are packaged in a 40-foot-long transportable container for international shipments.
Courtesy of Farea
With a background in engineering and technologically-advanced water leisure devices and equipment, Go Friday can help you plan and design a modular floating home that’s not only beautiful, but also environmentally sustainable and energy efficient. Their designs have a fixed width of approximately 20 feet and lengths that range from 32.8 to 59 feet. The shorter options are ideal for cozy studios, while longer options can fit three bedrooms.
Courtesy of Jose Campos Photography
SM Ponton – Slovakia
SM Ponton is a Slovakia-based designer and producer of modular, floating pontoon bases for houseboats and floating homes. Constructed with a reinforced-concrete structure that ensures maintenance-free durability and a Styrofoam core that makes the vessels unsinkable, the modules are connected together to form a rigid pontoon platform using locks at the mooring place. Architects and designers can then confidently build their homes on top of this platform.
Courtesy of Katarína Bako
Deutsche Composite – Germany
German manufacturers Deutsche Composite GmbH patented the composite construction material called RexWall, a lightweight construction concept that they’ve used in floating structures for more than a decade. Using RexWall sandwich panels, their Propeta series of houseboats are motored and fully licensed for cruising, and can weather waves, tidal changes, and frost. Interior fittings can be customized. The larger model called the Propeta P12, which is close to 40 feet long, can comfortably fit up to 10 beds.
Courtesy of Deutsche Composite GmbH
Waterstudio.Nl – the Netherlands
About 90 percent of the world’s largest cities are located along waterfronts. Koen Olthuis of Dutch architectural firm Waterstudio.NL believes that with climate change leading to drastic rises in sea levels, we’ll need to rethink how we live with water in the built environment. His team has designed sophisticated floating homes like Watervilla De Hoef and Watervilla IJburg in the Netherlands, and is working on masterplans for floating apartments, social housing developments, and even cities.
Courtesy of Pieter Kers