New York City’s notoriously space-hungry real estate market is converting the cantilever – perhaps made most famous in Frank Lloyd Wright’s floating Fallingwater residence of 1935 – from a mere move of architectural acrobatics to a profit-generating design feature.
Driven by a “more is more” mantra, developers and architects are using cantilevers to extend the reach of a building, creating unique vistas and extended floor space in a market in which both are priced at sky-high premiums.
“In New York, development is a three-dimensional chess game,” says Dan Kaplan, a senior partner at FXFOWLE Architects. Why stop at simply building taller? Zoning codes limit how high a building can rise – especially in “landmarked” neighborhoods which abide by strict limits in order to preserve contextual heights. So, if you can’t go any higher, why not extend outwards using your neighbor’s unused airspace?
“The reason we’re seeing an increase in the use of cantilevers above neighboring buildings is linked to the complexity of finding a site that can utilize all available development rights,” explains Kaplan in a recent New York Time article. The Isis, an 18-story condominium designed by FXFowle on East 77th Street, is a prime example of this opportunistic approach. The architects incorporated two eight-foot cantilevers; one floats 17 feet above the airspace of Xavier High School; the other, projects 36 feet above a north-facing courtyard.
By selling their air rights at $13.7 million, the high school was able to monetize space that it had no intention of using. Inversely, the developers – Alchemy Properties – were able to extend apartment layouts adding value to each individual unit.
“In the 1920s they used to build straight up, with wedding-cake-type setbacks,” Kaplan adds, “but with a cantilever, we can build outward as well as up, and in kind of an inversion of the wedding-cake theme, the floors are bigger toward the top, where space is more valuable.”
Other notable New York cantilevers taking advantage of unused airspace include SHoP’s Porter House (with an eight foot cantilever), Herzog and de Meuron’s 56 Leonard Street tower in TriBeCa, and the planned luxury residential tower on 224 West 57th Street which is to cantilever above the 1890s landmark, the Arts Students League, rising 1,423 feet anchored by New York City’s first Nordstrom department store.
“Some people may not like [the cantilever],” says David Von Spreckelsen, Senior Vice President of Toll Brother’s City Living, “but I think it adds an interesting modern component, and with people not willing to sell their property to you, but willing to sell their air rights, the cantilever almost becomes a necessity.”
With a seemingly endless demand for new housing stock in New York City, the cantilever adds value and aesthetics that did not exist before. The movement of intercepting shapes, as Wright discovered long ago, has created a dynamic alternative to the typical glass box. This, together with its ability to add salable square footage, makes the cantilever a viable player in a spatially-challenged real estate market.
Check out Herzog and de Meuron’s cantilevered 56 Leonard Street tower on ArchDaily.
“Shigeru Ban is a tireless architect whose work exudes optimism. Where others may see insurmountable challenges, Ban sees a call to action. Where others might take a tested path, he sees the opportunity to innovate. He is a committed teacher who is not only a role model for younger generation, but also an inspiration.” — Pritzker Jury 2014
Explore the architectural development of 2014 
This house was custom designed for a family of four. The idea for this house was not to blur the distinction from indoor to outdoor with big walls of glass, but to intensify the quality of each. Sustainable choices facilitate the client’s interest in indoor outdoor living.
The clients desired a weekend gathering place for their active family of five that would allow for flexibility to accommodate larger groups of family and friends and provide a direct connection to the outdoors for seasonal recreation.
This home’s "passive survivability" lies in its ability to capture and retain heat. In the instance of a power outage during the winter, the indoor air temperature would remain steady significantly longer than a traditionally built house without the opening of doors and windows.
The owner desired a compact, low-maintenance, virtually indestructible building to house himself and his wife during fishing expeditions. Composed of two levels, the cabin’s entry, dining and kitchen areas are located on the lower floor while a sleeping loft with minimal shelving hovers above.
Echoing the dramatic surface deformations that occur when wind blows over the crops and grasses of the surrounding prairie, the building skin, a high-performance ventilated rain screen system with concrete fiber panels, is organized by 190 individually shaped, black-anodized aluminum fins of interrelated contracting and expanding shapes.
This project has served as a catalyst for nearby urban redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization. Along with the complete makeover of an abandoned superstructure, passive solutions, including open breezeways carefully oriented to cool the circulation corridors, came with understanding San Antonio’s local climate.
The main architectural feature of this project is the building’s owner-controlled operable double façade system. By allowing the occupant to adjust the operable screens of the building façade, the facade is virtually redesigned “live” from within the space, reflecting the occupants of the building within, in real time.
This project is a high-density residential development with a mix of studios; one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments that were thoughtfully fit into its downtown Oakland site between an inner city neighborhood and a freeway.
This project restores and adds to a distressed historic building (a former YMCA). The project now houses two synergistic programs run by two nonprofits that co-purchased the building: The neighborhood youth training and employment program and supportive housing (serving youth exiting foster care, the mentally ill and the chronically homeless.)
In 2009, a group of families, autism professionals and community leaders founded the nonprofit organization Sweetwater Spectrum to meet the extraordinary need for appropriate, high-quality, long-term housing for adults with autism, offering life with purpose and dignity for residents.
A former Chinese military fort in Hong Kong emerged in the 20th century as a notorious densely populated and largely ungoverned enclave called Kowloon Walled City. It was demolished in 1994. In light of the release of a second, 
Alleyways and passages evolved – unplanned – into the established ‘map’ of the City, which would remain until it came down. A basic electric supply existed, increasingly burdened by illegal connections that frequently overloaded the system, and the few standpipes supplied the only water. As the need to accommodate the ever growing residential and commercial populations forced it to in the 1960s, the building typology of the Walled City made the leap from two- to three-storey residential structures to taller, six- to seven-storey ones.
The only constraint observed with consistency was the Kai Tak Airport height limit that existed for the entire area of Kowloon. Presumably even the most unscrupulous developer realised that to challenge this would be counterproductive, as it would force the government to respond negatively. Aside from this one ‘golden height limit’, almost anything was worth a try.
Because there was no masterplan to follow – or regulations to adhere to – unconventional circulation routes starting to weave through the city, rising and descending through adjacent structures. Existing staircases were co-opted, windows in adjacent buildings were ignored and walled over, floors were cantilevered over alleys, sometimes until they touched those across the way. The roofscape of the Walled City became its own public realm, with potted gardening, playing children, reposing adults, and where lateral circulation occurred (even by the postman).
An attempt in 1963 by local authorities to clear and evict a section of the north-east corner of the Walled City was halted after objections from the Chinese Government, and this explicit denial of British power within the Walled City opened the floodgates to rampant development. That same year, the local Kai Fong Association was formed by the residents, in part to help face the challenge of the British eviction effort and in part to arbitrate property claims, which undoubtedly increased in number and urgency thanks to the building boom. The population by this point had surpassed 15,000 people.
Meanwhile, private water wells were dug under the city (and the water sold for profit) with no thought to the consequences. The authorities did add one additional water standpipe, but the supply couldn’t keep pace with the growth in demand, and as the Walled City grew higher and denser, it became ever more difficult to rationalise and modernise the utilities anyway. The Government faced an unsolvable dilemma: it wanted to improve conditions without thereby encouraging further growth, but couldn’t easily do so because of the puzzling maze the Walled City had become.
Was the Walled City then a good laboratory test-case for urban self-growth, absent regulation or planning? Was its organic evolution an example of what all cities would look like without functional Government participation – a kind of Mad Max world of only self-regulated norms and limits? Without romanticising the reality of the Walled City, it also limited the negative, forming a proto-government, using unwritten laws instead of written ones, and to a significant extent functioning as a true democracy (certainly a true market economy).
Beixinqiao district, in Beijing, is changing fast: The ancient urban tissue is being demolished as new high-rises are growing. Located in this environment, Ma Yansong’s office sits within an old and anonymous construction. In contrast to its exterior, the inside is characterized by wood, white walls and plants that transform the place into a sophisticated environment. International young architects are busy modeling new organic-shaped buildings on the other side of the world; meanwhile a golden fish swims in the eternal loop of the “fish tank” in the centre of the room.
The scene takes place in Beaumont, Texas but was filmed in an actual housing complex in Bridge City, Louisiana. The scene begins with Hart parked in the Elmwood Village Shopping Center, located in Harahan, Louisiana, across from the Mississippi River. Hart sits and listens to the Beaumont police scanner as he waits for Cohle.-3.jpg)
In the second house, Cohle calls Hart and asks that he pick them up from Emile Avenue in 90 seconds. Ginger exits the house first and runs toward the intersection of Lake and Alaska, where Cohle catches up with him. They then run through the laundry behind another house, loop around the north end to the back of this building, and hide behind a small dividing wall.-1.jpg)
The scene, which was filmed in seven takes, required extensive preparation on the part of the filmmakers. Cary Fukunaga points out there were several elements that he planned on incorporating within the scene. 
