BACA Architects have just gained planning permission for building an Amphibious House.
An amphibious house is a building that rests on the ground on fixed foundations but, whenever a flood occurs, the entire building rises up in its dock and floats there, buoyed by the floodwater. The Local Authority and Environment Agency supported this proposal because it was a replacement dwelling so flood risk was reduced on this site. -BACA
There are three categories of things: Fragile things that break, like the financial system; robust things that don’t break easily but don’t improve, like the Brooklyn Bridge; and my new category, antifragile things that gain strength from stressors and get stronger from failure, like evolution. The fundamental problem in foreign policy is that people shoot for stability rather than antifragility. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A series of twitters from Dan lead me to the article and quote above. Only wondering about whether applying antifragile ideas to human built systems is a good idea given that Evolution the example stated above is the epitome of death, violence and extinction. Am eagerly awaiting his new book Antifragile to hear how things might fail well.