With the help of Crossboundaries, an innovative design firm with offices in Beijing and Frankfurt, a German woman named Marianne Fries has developed her 49-foot houseboat into a home on the water that shows what can be done within a limited space.
Fries worked in China for many years before returning to Berlin a few years ago. She also was friends with Binke Lenhardt, a co-founder of Crossboundaries. For exercise, she joined a rowing club in Berlin, and then decided she wanted to spend more time on the water.
In 2020, she bought a five-year-old, solar-powered houseboat there, and decided to renovate it to make it into a self-sufficient home that she eventually could use to cruise on Europe’s rivers and waterways. She named it Fang Song, the Chinese word meaning relax.
Fries asked Lenhardt for help. On its website, Crossboundaries said, “Why not redesign a fully solar-powered motorboat with high-end, tiny-home characteristics and create a slow-motion traveling nest?”
Fang Song now has a creative, open interior with red and yellow hues, the Chinese imperial colors. The sides are virtually floor-to-ceiling glass, and the furniture is not only multi-purpose, it also drops down from the ceiling, folds away, or can be affixed to a sliding wall.
Fries’ bed comes down from the ceiling, just above the boat’s bare-minimum helm station. The “salon” has a sofa that converts to a foldable bed. The kitchen table also folds up, and one area has a pop-up desk. But the boat has all the amenities for comfortable living, including a galley and a head with a stand-up shower. Storage areas are concealed everywhere; an exercise bike rises up from under the floor in the salon.
Fang Song is now moored just west of Berlin. Solar panels on the roof and on each side provide enough power to run all the boat’s house systems from March to November, and on sunny days the rest of the year. It also can plug into regular shore power.
Underway, Fang Song can cruise 30 miles a day at 4 mph. That’s fast enough for Fries. She wants to cruise first to Paris, tie up along the banks of the Seine, and then take the canals down to the south of France.
Read more at http://crossboundaries.com and see the video below:
