The Arkiboat prototype was built on top of a floating platform. It took nine months to design, manufacture and complete by the architect Drew Heath. For him , the design of a house for the water near Sydney, Australia, deserved a new approach. “The typical model of a houseboat in this region of Australia,” he explains, “is an extruded box from a pontoon. It has little interaction with the surrounds.”

Houseboats, by and large, do their best to recreate the quotidian comforts of the standard dwelling in compact, waterborne form. Any greater sea-living aspirations are often left to the overreaching desires, and budgets, of the yachting set.