life project (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment)

LIfE (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment)

Client defra funded project with: BRE, English Partnerships, Cyril Sweett, Fulcrum Consulting, HR Wallingford, LDA
Architect Architect Barker and Coutts architects

For more information please contact Robert Barker at Barker & Coutts, email rbarker@baca.uk.com
or Nick Corker at BRE, email corkern@bre.co.uk

Additional resources

LifE project website

Building article, issue 14, 2007

Many new homes are planned in areas of flood risk, especially those in the Thames Gateway. Every new development exacerbates long-term problems of flood risk and water shortage. LIfE (long-term initiatives for flood risk environment) provides integrated master-planning, architecture and environmental solutions to areas at risk.

These solutions are based upon a principle of creating ‘enduring communities’ that combine genuine sustainable design with natural ecological management of flood risk, and innovative architecture, to generate areas of extraordinary character and quality. One of the key principles of LifE is to utilise flood plains through creation of assets and designation for appropriate amenities, such as utilising lower land values to offset development costs for renewable energy, recreation and controlled development or improving water storage for operational use such as grey water and heating/cooling.

The aim is to devise and disseminate a set of principles for an approach to planning and design that can be replicated around the UK and, potentially, other parts of the world. Already many developments are planned in areas where there is a potential risk of flooding. As climate change advances and more areas come under risk, there is an even greater need for us to understand how to make developments flood resilient and to ensure continuity of daily life can be maintained during times of flooding.

Please click on images to enlarge

More detailed case project overviews available online

Floating homes: Either configured as individual homes or semi-detached properties. The property is accessed via a short ramp to the middle floor.The partially submerged lower floor provides bedroom accommodation with
clerestory windows, maximising the use of the void required for buoyancy.		Floating mini-city:A new high density development is proposed for a former dock site. Deep section floating platforms are used to provide buoyancy for lightweight timber frame flats. Secondary floating platforms are used for amenity space such as public gardens and play areas, and these are docked against the housing platforms.In the Netherlands, the traditional houseboat has been updated by developer DuraVermeer to the amphibious building, which floats on high tides or floodwater but rests on a solid platform when the water recedes. The building requires a robust, flat-bottomed raft, which in the case of this greenhouse is cast in concrete but filled with polystyrene for buoyancy.

Innovative strategies will be developed for three riverside sites. The project team will then prepare planning and design recommendations which will be tested by a wide group of stakeholders including the Environment Agency, local authorities, residents, developers, investors and insurers. From the feedback received, a set of generic planning and design principles will be produced together with working examples for developing integrated environmental and flood proof plans that are transferable to other sites and conditions.

View cafe, Rotherham
 East Tilbury masterplan
The £1.5 billion Silvertown Quays development

Development agencies, local authorities and developers interested in getting involved in the project are invited to put forward suggestions for sites.

Barker Coutts Architects (Baca) is an innovative research-led architectural practice specialising in architecture, landscape and strategic design. The practice’s focus is to create a beautiful and enduring environment – integrating architecture, technology and style underpinned by a sound understanding of sustainability. Baca have been developing the Life Project over the last 2 years and have teamed up with BRE and other project partners to deliver strategic proposals with DEFRA Funding. The long-term goal is to partner with a developer and construct some of these proposals in the UK. Baca were recently given the RIBA Sustainable Living by Design Award - ‘best unbuilt proposal’ for the LiFE Project. Baca are also currently working on designs for a number of floating properties in the Netherlands.

The £250,000 LIfE study has been initially funded under DEFRA’s Making Space for Water programme and will provide the construction industry with much needed guidance on developing sites to cope with flooding and climate change.

Aim: to demonstrate the benefits of integrating a number of important environmental approaches within developments; such as sustainability, natural flood mitigation, zero carbon/zero waste in such a way the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The long-term ambition of the project is to see these ideas implemented across the country.

This is a major project, which will be taken forward in five stages. The Innovation Fund will support the first stage, which will develop a set of generic principles for developing integrated environmental and long-term flood proof plans that are transferable to alternative sites and establish recommendations for follow on work.

Further stages of the project will seek to develop detailed solutions and develop and build example projects. It is not anticipated that Defra will fund these further stages, but Innovation Funding will allow the project to begin and encourage other funders to get involved.