The world's first water house was shown to professionals on Saturday in Kecskemet, a city in central Hungary, Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.
The water house is 10 square meters. It was based on an invention by 33-year-old Hungarian architect Matyas Gutai, who has dealt with the efficient use of water in architecture for 10 years.
The essence of the water house is that a thickness of several centimeters of water flows between the outer and inner layers of the walls, and between the double glass surfaces. Not only the side walls, but also the floor and the ceiling are filled with water.
Gutai said he could prove with the water house that if he build a hybrid structure instead of a traditional building structure, a built-in responsive capability will form in the structure.
This basically means that the flowing water in the house provides an equalizing effect, just like the equalizing effect of the water that covers 73 percent of the Earth's surface, thereby increasing comfort, he added.
According to Gutai, the liquid-panel system is heating and cooling body as well, and the entire surface of the building stores solar power that can be used later. Water bodies are connected inside the building, so the temperature differences are equalized, he said.
Gutai said his invention can be successfully applied to any type of building, but mainly to large glass surfaces.
The Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the University of Tokyo participated in the implementation of the water house prototype. The European Union supported its construction with about 36 million Hungarian forints (about 153,000 U.S. dollars), which accounted for 67 percent of the total budget.
Gutai spent his middle school years in Kecskemet, and graduated from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Currently he works as a researcher at the University of Tokyo.