Keeping afloat: First floating home moored on Chichester Canal

The architecture studio behind the UK's first amphibious house has completed a floating home on Chichester Canal.

Baca Architects developed the house as a prototype with British company Floating Homes after the design won an ideas competition seeking solutions to London's housing crisis earlier this year, reports Dezeen.

The London-based studio said its "boxy" design was inspired by canal boats, but it had increased the scale and included plenty of windows to create a more spacious and luxurious home on the water.

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"Internally, the proportions are very different to a canal boat, but with the same ethos of space efficiency," it said.

"These homes are not only practical and affordable but create a sense of sanctuary by living on water, which is a unique experience in most cities."

Floating Homes insists it is "not a houseboat, but a house that floats", affording much larger proportions than the traditional houseboat.

The home features an open-plan living, kitchen and dining area with a large window offering beautiful views of the surrounding countryside.

The Chichester prototype follows a surge of interest in floating buildings, which respond to rising sea levels and a shortage of development sites, says Dezeen.

Baca Architects was behind the UK's first "amphibious house", which was built in 2014 for a couple who had been looking for seven years for a site to build a home on a flood-prone river island near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. The house is designed to float and rise with the water levels.

"Rather than building flood defences, we considered a different approach - to acknowledge man cannot beat nature and to actually make space for water," said Baca co-founder Richard Coutts. "Our work, until recently, was better known in Holland than here in the UK."