10 floating neighborhoods to understand living on water

With a maximum depth of 10 m, Kampong Khleang is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia with an area ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 sq m, from the dry to the rainy season. Here, the rains bring changes and impose adaptive skills: the lake's inhabitants go from cultivating to floating on the very land they live on.
The villages have a combination of floating houses and houses on stilts. The floating ones use mainly metal and plastic barrels to float, leaving a covered space for cooking, sleeping, and working: in this sense, the houses in the lake serve two different functions between periods of high water and those when the water recedes and the land, full of nutrients, becomes perfect farmland until the floods of the next rainy season.

Moving towards Latin America, on the shore of Lake Titicaca, the Uru people were forced to move to the lake as a defensive tactic against the expansion of the Inca Empire. The Uru live today, as then, on artificial islands made of living Totora reeds, which grow on the edge of the lake. The Totora is a South American reed that can reach a height of 6 metres and is used to tie or weave furniture, boats, houses, even entire islands. As the reeds disintegrate, the Uru add more to the top and this continuous process keeps them afloat in perpetuity. The surface of the islands is soft, able to support the weight of people, dwellings and earth, brought from the lake shores and placed on top of the reeds for small-scale farming.

On the banks of the Nile, on the other hand, the barge houses of Cairo's Kit Kat district are now a picturesque setting for hikers and tourists. The long history of houseboats on the Nile dates back to the time of the pharaohs, with boats designed for long journeys on the river. Much forward in time, the technique of building houses on floating metal containers held together by wooden or metal beams developed: these were not intended for navigation, but to offer a panoramic view of the river; during the Ottoman era, the rich often took floating houses as luxurious second residences and used them to entertain guests with music and belly dancers. During the Second World War, the British armed forces used to live there.

Srinagar is the largest city in Indian Kashmir and is famous for its vast network of rivers and lakes. The origins of the city's houseboats date back to the time of the British Raj, when the British liked to travel to Kashmir in the summer months to escape the heat and dust of the Indian plains, but were not allowed to own land. Thus the idea of a “floating camp” was born. As needs evolved, the visiting British clientele had less time for leisure holidays and wanted more spacious accommodation, cultivating floating gardens and producing produce for the market, making it the centre of their livelihood.

The houseboats on Lake Union were occupied by fishermen, boat builders and others in the 1920s. In the 1930s, houseboats were low-cost living places for people living through the Depression. In the 1950s, apartment buildings on the water began to replace houseboats and their numbers declined. In 1965, the city completed the Lake Union sewer line and houseboat owners built sewer connections and worked to expand the docks. During this period the floating aggregation evolved into a community of artists and students, in a more bohemian culture which in the 1960s used to develop across over 2000 shacks. Today the community has shrunk to 500 houseboats, and attracts a diverse group of water lovers.

Turning to the commercial type, we find the floating markets characterizing the spaces of Bangkok, where agricultural products used to be traded and exchanged, by gathering boats on rivers and canals. Besides being central places for trading food, markets were also used for social gatherings and cultural celebrations. However, many floating markets disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s due to the development of roads and the introduction of the automobile. In late 1990s, however, the Thai government reintroduced floating markets as part of cultural tourism programmes, aimed at preserving and restoring farming villages and reviving the ancient ways of life along the canals.

Located between Wong Chuk Hang, Aberdeen and northern Ap Lei Chau, the Aberdeen Typhoon Shelter has long been one of the main refuges for local fishermen, known as the ‘people who live on the water’. With the progress of the fishing industry, a large number of fishermen abandoned their daily work and moved to the coast, but there are still several hundred families living in the floating village. Currently, the harbour is known to hold 600 junks and is home to 6,000 people.

Makoko is located on the mainland coast of Lagos and is considered an “informal” community. One third of the area it covers is made up of buildings, shacks and shanties built on stilts in the shallow Lagos Bay, which has led to it often being called the ‘Venice of Africa’. Founded in the early 19th century, Makoko has a varied history, which began when fishermen from neighbouring Togo and the Republic of Benin settled in the area. Since then, this community continues to endure despite cultural, political and environmental struggles. In 2012, conflicts with the local government caused the displacement of some 3,000 people from their homes.

Looking at more contemporary projects, on the other hand, it is easy to mention the Schoonschip project, an example of floating architecture that has appeared in Amsterdam on the Johan van Hasselt canal that could become the prototype for future urban developments. It is a neighbourhood of 46 dwellings designed by the Dutch architecture firm Space&Matter and founded on the principles of circularity and sustainability that reflect the values of its community. The residents themselves, in fact, follow a housing style based on the circular model, both socially and environmentally. Taking responsibility for resource consumption and waste disposal, they organise themselves internally, in a radical rethinking of the way our cities are organised.

The arrival of the canal in 1801 in Paddington, by then just a village on the outskirts of London, made the whole area an important waterway junction. For the first 150 years, before taking the name of Little Venice, many exclusive Italian-style houses were built along the Regents Canal. A community of inhabited boats has then settled on this stretch of water over the years, now partly used by locals, partly rented out to tourists.