'Like a shimmering sea creature': Britain's first amphibious homes

A luxury floating house on the Thames that rises and falls with the water levels is just the start for the architectural duo set on addressing problem flooding

The wise man built his house upon the rock - not upon the flood plain. But the UK housebuilding industry seems to have skipped that particular Sunday school lesson: Britain is building houses in the highest-risk flood areas at almost twice the rate of housing outside flood plains - up to 20,000 new homes are likely to be built in areas of flood risk this year alone. Most won't be hoisted up on stilts or shaped like boats, ready to bob up and down as the waters rise, but built in exactly the same way as the houses recently devastated by the wettest December on record.

Related: Floods hit 16,000 properties in wettest December in a century, MPs told