Flood House is concerned with climate change and explores ways for living with the threat of flooding in the UK. It has emerged from long-term research by the author into ecological architecture, which through the performative and poetic can rethink the way we design and live within the context of climate change.

For this project, Mathew Butcher investigated the specific ecosystems and vernacular typologies of the River Thames and examined how to materialise a mobile architecture in a symbiotic relationship with an environment that is prone to flooding.

Flood House existed as a temporary floating house-like structure that was towed to and moored at several locations in the Thames Estuary during the spring of 2016. The structure incorporated a small weather station, which collected climate data from the specific sites it was moored at. An interdisciplinary public art and education programme ran in tandem with the structure’s movements in the estuary.