There’s something very romantic about living on the water – moored on a river or maybe in a tropical lagoon.
How would you fancy being at home on the water? Firstly let’s get a bit of housekeeping out of the way: what’s the difference between a houseboat and a floating home?
This is a floating home – which is defined as a permanently moored structure with no means of self propulsion.
This gorgeous thing is a houseboat – which is a self propelled vessel capable of manoeuvring on its own. You may have guessed that it is one of the famous houseboats of Kerala in India.
So what would you call this? This over-the-top tropical floating island is a fantasy dreamed up by Yacht Island Design, which planned it as a private luxury yacht to accommodate 10 guests with about 57,000 square feet of usable space. They estimate it would cost “several hundreds of million euros to build.” Looks rather like a child’s toy!
This is what I would call scary. What happens when there’s a wave?
I would have much more trust in this floating house found on Amstel river, in Amsterdam, Holland. Modelled after the design of traditional floating houses, it combines functionality and minimalist design. It has a total surface of 200 square meters and has two levels – the lower one goes underwater, because the maximum height of the house had to be 3 meters.
Here is a project for Dubai where architects are competing to design the most astonishing luxury water homes possible. They are exploiting the underwater element of the building and developing a coral reef so t5here is something pretty to see out of the bathroom window. Hopefully there won’t be passing divers.
But, back in the real world. this is what you can expect of a houseboat in England.
The charming barges and narrow boats of our waterways are beloved homes to some people, but most of us are happy to live that particular dream for a few days on holiday.
