photo via hno (henk nouwens) flickr

Holton Rower spotted this amazing image on henk nouwens flickr. It is titled ‘The Cantilevered Void House’ and accompanied by these words:

“Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun’s rotation, exuded a kind of darkness for all their color.” Cantilevered structures self-supported over the void. From: The Gormenghast Novels.

Who knows what the story is, whether the house is real or fake? Is it a fantastical image from The Gormenghast Novels? Comments on the flickr page yielded no info but lead us to a tove of images at The Cantilever Project, which got us thinking about cantilevers:  A projecting structure, such as a beam, that is supported at one end and carries a load at the other end or along its length.

We’re smitten with this simple cantilever plywood chair (tiny angle braces clearly showing…could we diy this?)

photo: andrew weed via flickr

That got us mulling cantilevered household items like Mies van der Rohe‘s “Weissenhof” cantilever chair, whose essential shape has been copied endlessly:

We’re looking around our place, and life,  through cantilever eyes.

Related posts: d-i-y asymmetrical plank bench
lust for rust: in a modern house and our own experiments
citizen architect samuel mockbee
d-i-y: cracking the code of a donald judd table

01.22.13 | in buildings, dream houses, elements, furniture, outside, principles |
trackback | tags: cantilever, cantilevered structures, diy plywood chair, unique architecture