Changing the Pitch

Fareh Garba (Professor)
Kevin Watters
Sean Cahalin
Amanda Thatcher


Environmental disasters take many different forms; from hurricanes to tornadoes and mudslides to earthquakes, many natural disasters often include flooding. Flooding can also stand alone as its own natural disaster. In most cases, people don’t have an answer to flooding, which is why the average person will purchase flood insurance. What about the people who cannot afford flood insurance or live in a place that doesn’t even provide insurance? How are they protected against flooding?
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“Changing the Pitch” is a prototype house for people of low income who live on the water in areas that flood often. Instead of resisting a flood or trying to prevent it, this prototype embraces the flood and reacts with it.

How does the house react with the flood?
As seen on the “prototype mechanics” board, as the water level increases, the first floor begins to float, pushing centerline columns, attached to the first floor, through the second floor. The centerline columns push the centerline beam of the roof, increasing the pitch of the roof. By increasing the pitch of the roof, the space lost by the first floor collapsing is gained on the top of the second floor.

Sustainability
The materials used should be materials around the areas where these houses will be built, in order to save money. By using indigenous building materials, it makes for easy access to the materials in the future. In the example of Lagos, Nigeria where the residents already have homes clad of sheet metal, it would be a good idea to reuse the sheet metal as a cladding material. The framing material should be as light as possible, in order for the buoys to be able to keep it afloat. Each 55-gallon drum can lift 520 pounds. These drums can be recycled from old oil drums.

Another part of sustainability is the quality of life for the residents living in the house. Many times in low-income houses, the residents are often without electricity. Because of this, it is important to design by choosing materials and certain solar orientations to maximize sunlight etc. The use of a metal roof, acts as a heat absorber that heats the air around it. This acts as an air conditioner by convection; the warm air rises, pulling the cool air from the water around the house upward and into the residential area.

Organization
The organization and layout of the shown on the board is a “prototype” organization. I envision it to be based on a rigid grid, so that each side of the house has 10-20 feet of water. This would allow for travel on all sides and could create thoroughfares for specific travel like commercial and residential.


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