Imagine waking up to a gentle waggle and the fresh air infused with refreshing water droplets. Stepping out to the sun-filled deck, you can see the giant beautiful water mirror and natural landscapes all around. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Floating houses have risen in demand, and are no longer a privilege of unconventional or immensely rich.
Many floating houses don’t differ much from the traditional homes. They just happen to float. But the following collection of architecture is full of modern and contemporary ideas.
Floating House in Ontario, Canada
This is perhaps one of the most popular floating houses. It’s been featured everywhere, including here. And it is especially noteworthy because it was prefabricated and towed to its location by a boat.
The house is highly adaptable to the flow of Lake Huron, and rises with the tides thanks to its clever float structure. Just like its exterior, the house’s interiors are designed with lots of natural wood.
Watervilla Amstel in Amsterdam
+31 Architects created a contemporary houseboat for the Amstel River to make the residents ‘enjoy every day a feeling of being on holiday’.
A modern structure is long and glass-heavy rectangle with a wooden landside pathway and a generous sun awning that helps regulate sunlight. On the inside, it’s sleek and light.
Floating House Concept For the Ocean
Dymitr Malcew, who’s based in Singapore, has come up with a modern house concept for an exotic location. Its pavilion-like design is meant for taking advantage of surrounding views.
Spacious roof and floor surfaces create natural sun awnings and decks, allowing for an ultimate relaxation in some oceanic paradise.
Traumfänger Floating House in Hamburg
Traumfänger takes after a boat, but it’s a contemporary wooden house in nature. Its award-winning design is a perfect compromise between tradition and modernism.
With its spacious rooms and outdoor terraces, the houseboat is moored on the Eilbekkanal in Hamburg amidst the beautiful trees and other floating dwellings.
Water Villa in Amsterdam
This luxury water villa came to be from a collaborative work of two studios. Spacious wood-clad dwelling looks ultra contemporary.
If you think that it is too small to have three floors, though, it is because one is submerged under water. A private home features modern shutters that open up rare windows. But the atrium ensures the space is light and bright.
Watervilla de Omval in Amsterdam
Another waterbound project from +31 Architects is also a futuristic water villa. This one’s moored on river Omval in Amsterdam. Featuring a wall of windows, the villa opens up to the river views and urban surroundings.
Inside, the house is as sleek and cool with a few natural accents that echo the nature that surrounds it. Aside from the front dock, the house also features a roof terrace for outdoor lounging.
Houseboat in Utrecht, Netherlands
BYTR Architecten built a houseboat on a canal in Utrecht to take advantage of its views. But the clients required privacy, so the house was planned accordingly, with the lower levels partially submerged under water.
To maximize daylight inside the house, the designers used skylights and white paint, while all types of windows provide each room and hallway with plenty of natural light.
Floating House on London’s River Thames
This contemporary houseboat is one of the most stylish floating houses we’ve seen. It floats in the London’s Thames River somewhere near Taggs Island.
Its landside view makes it look as though the house stands firmly on the ground, but it’s only an illusion. The home’s numerous outdoor lounge spaces offer serenity and peace within a rather lively area.
Floating House in Seattle
Seattle’s water real estate is on the rise. New and new houses are getting built and sold every year like this floating cabin by Dyna Contracting.
Clad in wood, the traditional-looking home has plenty of modern elements that help make the most of the location and views.
Floating Home in Seattle
This modernized traditional home is a dreamy property on the Flo Villa Coop. It offers light and charming interiors in a cute waterbound neighbourhood. With two bedrooms, a sleeping porch, and an office den, the house also ensures you can enjoy outdoor lounging.
Combining the best of tradition and contemporaneity this is a true home kind of house. Among its other cool features are fir floors and shiplap walls and ceiling.
Steel & Cedar Home in Seattle
Another one of Seattle’s floating houses that stands out among its peers is this 2-bedroom Westlake Ave cube. Featuring aged steel and cedar siding, the house boasts glass inclusions and industrial loft style.
On the inside, it is outfitted with contemporary interiors in white and cedar. Its bedroom and living areas open up to the views of the neighboring docks.
Contemporary Floating House in Seattle
Seattle’s floating houses don’t stop surprising us with their contemporary architecture. This one stands on concrete floats 24 feet wide by 44 feet long. With upper level made of glass, it is shielded with a wooden shutter system.
These public rooms open up to the panoramic views of Lake Union, while the private quarters dressed in solid wood offer just a glimpse of water.
Another one of the firm’s floating houses looks just as contemporary, but more spacious. Three and a half bathrooms is only interior space. There are also 850 square feet (79 sq m) of terraces and roof decks.
The home has a more private design, but there are numerous glass elements allowing the views of Lake Union.
Lake Union Float Home in Seattle
Designs Northwest Architects built another house that floats somewhere in the Lake Union with its own dock, roof terrace, and all around stylish exterior.
Made to live luxuriously, the house includes living room water views, two floors of living space, and a spiral staircase that allows roof access.
Bluefield Houseboat
Bluefield Houseboats offer floating houses like no other. Modern and stylish with a focus on high quality, they look inviting and cool.
This particular model has an outdoor staircase to the rooftop garden furnished for lounging. And the interchanging glass and wood elements in its structure make for a really modern design.
Urban Rigger in Copenhagen
Urban Rigger is a Student Housing Development in Denmark. Made out of shipping containers, this float house is one of the low-cost solutions that is also intended to keep the students within the city, as it expands.
9 container units resulted in 15 studio homes with a centralized winter garden and a ladder for a comfy and safe descent into water.
Floating Houses in IJburg, Amsterdam
A neighborhood of IJburg is not a regular one. It is filled with floating houses and dwellings perched on the stilts. It counts seventy-five waterside dyke homes that create entire water streets.
Designed in a similar style, the houses appear as some kind of rock formation, but in spite of their sameness their modern silhouettes look stylish and cool.
Stone Village in Hangzhou Marshland, China
British architect David Chipperfield completed a village of stone in the Hangzhou Marshland. Xixi Wetland Estate is a series of apartments standing in water and appear to be floating.
Surrounded with beautiful greenery, the houses stand out with their clean and smart shapes, reflecting in the green waters of the marshland like in a giant mirror.
Float House in Tel Aviv
If you wish you lived on water but have no such opportunity, you can fake it. Pitsou Kedem’s Float House tricks the visual sense, as it appears standing on still water.
In fact, the house is simply surrounded with water sources to create an illusory effect that earns the house its name.
Sting Ray Luxe Floating Villa
Another floating house concept comes in an unusual and luxurious form of a Sting Ray. Conceptualized by Schopfer Associates, the luxe dwelling would have two storeys, an infinity edge pool with an inbuilt hot tub, and its own dock. Not bad!
As all unconventional properties, floating houses have their own disadvantages like mooring fees and a more expensive insurance, but you’ll have to weigh those against the opportunity to live like a water royal.
