Beijing Architects Turn Houseboat Into Solar Powered Floating Home. Beijing architecture studio Crossboundaries have turned a client’s houseboat into a tiny floating solar-powered house named Fàng Song.
The existing houseboat, the 60-square-metre home is moored in Berlin and features a series of interlinked, adaptable spaces. The owner Marianne Friese purchased the boat in 2020, with the aim of turning it into a personal sanctuary.
When not living in the boat in Berlin, she uses it to travel across lakes and rivers around Europe, often relying only on solar panels to power the trips. From March to November and on sunny days in winter, the houseboat is fully self-reliant on its solar panels covering the entire roof and as well as one additional panel on each side.
This allows it to travel approximately 50 km per day at an average speed of 7 km/h on sunny days. It is also equipped with large battery storage in order to deliver the energy for the engines as well as the home appliance and technical needs of the boat.
A pellet stove was installed to satisfy the heating demand; the pellets are stored in the storage space beneath the flooring, called bilge on boats. Marianne plans further ecological improvements such as a water purification system that filters the river or lake water that the boat is on into drinking water quality.
A biological sewage treatment unit is also to be added to upgrade to the ecological standard of the boat, and will convert used water into drinking water, which will make the boat even more self-reliant. Due to the pandemic, the project was conducted remotely, with a design team in Beijing and a construction site in Berlin.
The designers and owner hope the architectural concept will show how this ecologically sound “tiny home on the water.” will show people they can “free themselves from too many possessions and embrace denser-but-quality spaces and thus achieve more flexible ways of life”.