The lesson is from Dutch Housing Minister Sybilla Dekker who recently said: "You cannot fight water. You have to learn how to live with it."
Or in this case, float on it.
With scientists predicting sea-level rises of up to 110 cms (43 inches) by 2100, and catastrophic weather events becoming ever more common, the floating house could be the only realistic way for people to continue living in low-lying areas without fear of losing their homes, possessions and even lives to flooding.
The Netherlands famously known for its windmills, half the country lies below mean sea level. Flooding has long been a fact of life and extensive range of dikes and dunes protects the land from the rising tides.
Now a construction and engineering company Dura Vermeer has come up with a novel and, when you think about it, obvious solution to the problem: houses that float.
"These type of homes offer a good way of dealing with the effects of climate change," Dura Vermeer spokesman Johan van der Pol said.
"Unlike normal houses, they are extremely flexible when it comes to flooding, able to deal with a sea level rise of up to five metres.
The company has developed two variations on the same theme: a floating house which, as the name suggests, sits permanently on the water like a boat; and an amphibious house that stands on dry land but, in the event of floods, is able to rise with the water.
Both employ a large hollow concrete cube at their base to provide buoyancy, and are "moored" in pairs to huge steel piles to keep them anchored in one place, the piles enabling them to withstand currents as strong as you would find on the open seas.
