5) Description of housing product/service offering: In Colombia like several other places around the world, especially in Southamerica, there are areas that year by year suffer due to flooding periods. Hundreds of thousands of people from lower social strata are affected by these circumstances, let alone the fact that every year they suffer the loss of their houses, furniture, animals and food supplies that represent their only patrimony. In many cases these people don’t have the opportunity to evacuate the flooded places temporarily due to the difficulty to carry their belongings along with them. Sometimes this difficulty forces them to rescue the few things they have left from the water, and as a consequence of this, they even risk their relative’s lives and even their own. Arquitectura Flotante, offers the design and construction of floating housing units, barns, and animal stables, pedestrian sidewalks, and other kinds of constructions even facilities such as, schools, hospitals or health care centers that can float and adapt to unstable levels of flooding in the affected areas preventing housing, furnishings and people from being completely lost. The recent events ocurred in New Orleáns, USA have demonstrated that not only third World countries can be hit by natural disasters. In areas located within a high risk of flooding perimeters, preventive actions must be taken to anticipate catastrophes, for nature’s power is unexpected and out of our control.

6) Description of innovation: ARQUITECTURA FLOTANTE gives the possibility to bring architectural floating solutions that can be totally dismantled and re-assembled somewhere else avoiding the loss or damage of the construction materials including their foundations. Thus, this becomes a huge alternative for lower resources communities affected by flooding. Moreover, it has other applications such as emergency care facilities and others. The design and construction is conceived as a modular structure thet can be expanded into larger surfaces to cover bigger areas. Arquitectura flotante means low cost budget solutions with high quality materials plus the flexibility that any cultural and aesthetic aspect of the region would be respected by using local materials and hand labor of the particular place or region in order to reduce costs.

7) Benefits to clients: The lack of economical resources of some governments to give long term solutions to the housing problems in flooding areas, and the incapacity to assist emergencies when they occur, becomes an important opportunity to adopt this solution as an alternative to anticipate and assist efficiently the needs of the communities located in these high risk areas. In the worst case scenario, the devastating consequences of natural disasters could be diminished and the resources, would be destined to better uses. Private companies and international organizations could contribute in the finacing of the projects with a low interest rate and the lowering of the cost of raw materials

8) Key operational partnerships: The original idea was conceived by a team of architects: Luis Alfredo González, Jesús Armando Bedoya y David Fernando Duque A. ( graduated from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia), especialized in the design and construction of buildings. Our concern about people who have been less fortunate, led us to create ARQUITECTURA FLOTANTE. In this process as strategic partners, we contacted INCUBADORA DE EMPRESAS DE BASE TECNOLOGICA DE ANTIOQUIA, organization that was created by highly recognized enterprises in our country. This company is some sort of big enterprising lab which main objective is to maximize the value of companies in the shortest time possible, and the support of the creation of new enterprises. LA INCUBADORA DE EMPRESAS (enterprise incubator), is an iterdisciplinary group of professionals, whose work is to consult and give qualification to pre-selected enterprises contributing to the liability and services, so that their companies are competitive with the rest of the market. Additionally, we have the support of STUDIO AUDIOVISUAL, company specialized in the development of TV productions, and other media products, that actually works on the material which will be used in the marketing of our project.

9) Financial model: The project is sustained with the reduction that the government makes by not having to invest periodically in the reconstruction of the communities that are generally affected

          • Costs as percentage of income: 7 %

          • Financing: Low budget products sustained by government support . Long term payments with low or no interest rates. Local hand labor from the beneficiaries in some parts of the process. Local materials for the finishing process.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: The initiative is in its initial stage, but the evaluation and the receptiveness of the idea with many professionals have demonstrated us its viability its future and positive impact.

          • Number of clients in past year: No one yet, but we plan that this could change in a short period of time

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 95%

          • Potential demand: The demand is potentially huge. Just in South America a minimum of 1-5000000 million people

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: We hope to sell our products or share our idea with governments and countries affected by the floodings.

12) Origin of the initiative: From the comfort of our home year after year we have seen on TV, how natural disasters such as flooding affect those less fortunate; every year the same people become victims of new catastrophes due to the lack of more permanent solutions. This situation motivated the initiative for solutions according to the changing environment. Its time to do something and Floating architecture its one of our projects.

Contact Information:
David Fernando  Duque Agudelo
Architect
ARQUITECTURA FLOTANTE
(Individual)
Calle 34 # 80 B 23 - Ed Orquidea.
Colombia
Tel: ( 0574 ) 2507354
Fax: ( 0574 ) 2507354
Email: davidfdo@une.net.co