What’s the purpose of cantilevered volumes in contemporary residential architecture? Are they worth the added cost in construction, materials, and insulation? Or are they strictly expressions of structural bravado and formal creativity?

Certainly expression results in incorporating cantilevers like those who follow into residential structure, but the best justification for them is that the outdoor space that is obtained by lifting some volume off the floor. A backyard area that might otherwise be too small or of an awkward ratio becomes more generous, and even more interesting to boot up. Also the cantilevers provide shade and serve to define outdoor”rooms” These examples illustrate these and other benefits that come from lifting living spaces up high.

E. Cobb Architects

Inspired by exposed steel beams and columns, this cantilevered second narrative is raised quite high as a result of generous height of the living room. An outdoor patio sits under the projection, capped by a really nice wood ceiling. The next narrative’s outdoor paths in metal grating allow people upstairs to feel the cantilevering volume.

Katya Lin Photographer Studio

A wood ceiling additionally defines this exterior seating area adjacent to a lap pool, yet here the wood continues to the sides of the cantilevered quantity, which makes it appear predominantly solid. The”room” underneath has an intimate scale, and of course some color from the hot sunshine. A glazed end of the cantilever (facing right, not visible) seems to reach past the pool, as if to look past the perimeter wall instead of at the swimmers under.

This cantilever works similarly to the previous photo, yet it’s wrapped in metal panels instead of wood. Here the scale can be romantic, at about the height of a door. The lawn and concrete pad mimicking the projection are needing some landscaping and furniture, to enliven this steel and glass Modernism.

Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects

At first glance this Long Island, New York house’s cantilever appears impressive, if not hopeless: six big window bays beyond a rooftop infinity pool. But structural logic dictates that a cantilever has something resisting its downward force. That something is surely missing in this photo…

Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects

. . .yet it’s shown in this view. (The previous photo’s cantilever is on the left .) That resistance is an extension of the next floor on the other hand, working just like a balanced teeter-totter. A closer look at this photo (and the additional photographs on the architect’s internet page) also shows that a brick fireplace offers additional support underneath the projection. Plus it looks like a cozy place to hang out on a cold Hamptons night.

Ian Engberg

This small project is basically two rectangular volumes, but instead of being piled the upper floor is pinwheeled and cantilevered over the lawn and pool patio; the L-shaped pool sits between the ground floor’s glass walls and the column propping up the next floor. Why don’t you pile the floors? Here the 90-degree spinning lowers the structure needed, allowing the lower floor to be somewhat open, defined on either side by sliding glass walls.

Studio Pali Fekete architects [SPF:a]

In the distance a cantilevered volume seems to be doing something now recognizable: defining a seating area adjacent to a pool. While that is certainly true, why does the teak facade pay the side facing the pool? Why don’t you return towards this water feature? Maybe another view of the Hollywood Hills home is needed…

Studio Pali Fekete architects [SPF:a]

. . .This altitude of the home (the pool is on the plinth to the left) shows that the cantilevered room is appearing to the right. As are the balcony above the three-car garage and the teak-clad volume at the very top. There has to be a dramatic perspective of Los Angeles in this way.

Skylab Architecture

This perspective of a home in Portland, Oregon shows a split-level layout (three tales in the front, two in the back) built into a hillside. A wood volume from the middle angles out from the fir tree on the right, apparently sitting over the entry walkway. Another view shows more about this cantilever…

Skylab Architecture

. . .This angled projection doesn’t cover usable distance, similar to the other examples above. It reaches over a steep hillside that would be very difficult to build upon. Hence a cantilever is your logical choice. This houses a kitchen/dining place and an adjacent outdoor deck overlooking the tree-lined hillside.

Ian Moore Architects

In case the last example uses a cantilever to reduce its own footprint on a challenging site, this home in Australia by Ian Moore takes a similar approach, if not very apparent initially. This view of the entry walkway shows a rectangular pub cantilevering on the two ends; a symmetrical essay lifting the home above the land sloping away from it.

Ian Moore Architects

A nearer view of Ian Moore’s design shows a small base anchoring the home to the site, among two concrete block storage areas on the two ends that extend in the home as support cores. This home treads lightly on its dramatic site close to the top of Saddleback Mountain, as a result of the decision to cantilever it on a lightweight steel construction.

Paul McKean design llc

This weekend getaway in Oregon technically doesn’t cantilever like the previous examples, however, the dramatic overhang of the next narrative quantity makes it feel like it belongs. The Hood River site demands, like the two homes prior to this one, treading lightly. All living spaces are lifted up, with a service core in concrete and a deck under part of their projecting volume.

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