The world’s safest house, according to architect Eugene Tsui and current Internet buzz, is a Berkeley, Calif., home that was inspired by an alien-looking, sturdy animal called a tardigrade.
Locals familiar with the home, on 2747 Matthews Street, have nicknamed it The Fish House because of its scaly exterior, fish eye-resembling windows and side fins.
Tardigrades aren’t fish, though. They are small, water-dwelling, segmented animals with eight legs. (Be sure to click on the earlier tardigrade link. They are quite something to look at!) Tsui is clearly a fan.
On his website, he writes:
The unusual house was built for just $250,000, a relative drop in the construction bucket. Tsui says it’s made out of concrete, styrofoam/cement block, “hardwall” structural plaster, stucco, non-toxic waterproofing, acrylic, marine fiberglass, douglas fir, recycled wood, birch veneer plywood, “opalina” iridescent paint and rich gold exterior paint.
The design is a “precise ellipse in plan.”
In addition to studying tardigrades, Tsui also analyzed the inner workings of Cholla cactus. The recycled Styrofoam and cement blocks used in the structure (reinforced with steel and concrete) are said to be “lightweight, fireproof, waterproof, termite-proof and extremely earthquake resistant.” The reinforced lattice structure of the blocks is what is “very much like the skeleton of a the Cholla cactus.”
He even worked in a bit of dinosaur body design.
As Tsui explained, “The design program approached the house as a living organism capable of actively responding to various natural elements of the site. A prominent example of this is the subsurface solar water tubes that are positioned to correspond to the sun-ray like exterior motif that covers much of the upper level of the house. Water in the black tubes is heated by the sun throughout the day. At night the stored heat is radiated back into the interior of the house walls and provides radiant wall heat. This subsurface solar heating system was conceived by studying the bone and capillary structures of two dinosaurs, the Dimetrodon and the Stegosaurus.”
He added, “Both reptiles utilized a form of biological solar heating by way of the large sail-like structure on the back of the Dimetrodon and the series of plate structures on the back of the Stegosaurus. In both these ancient reptiles the plate structures were surrounded by a very packed configuration of blood veins. The sun heated up these vein-filled plates and helped to regulate the body temperature of these reptiles. Thus a form of living solar heating was being practiced 150,000,000 years ago.”
To see more images of this animal- and nature-inspired house, including its very cool central skylight and circular ramp, please check out this site.