Cantilever House

Year: 2024 Design & Honor Awards | Category: Residential Over $1 Million

Cantilever House, located on a challenging narrow, wedge-shaped urban lot, utilizes creative architectural strategies to craft a modern, privacy-focused home. Its distinctive 20-foot cantilever, aimed at overcoming site constraints, enhances views and outdoor living, fostering a harmonious relationship with the adjacent park. Strategic openings and the manipulation of natural light promote well-being by blending indoor and outdoor spaces, emphasizing a connection to nature and the environment. Integrating well-being features, the house balances beauty and function, ensuring a space that uplifts and inspires, while the dynamic interplay of light adds to the sense of delight throughout the day.

Design Challenge

Cantilever House addresses the challenge of a wedge-shaped, quarter-acre urban lot through careful design and thoughtful programming. Designed with a broad appeal in mind, this modern home features an L-shaped layout that promotes an open and engaging environment for family living and entertaining. Central to its design is a three-story circulation space that includes a visually striking entry and floating stairs, leading to a spacious great room, kitchen, and dining area. These spaces extend seamlessly outdoors, complemented by a pool, spa, and patio, with expansive sliding glass doors that blur the indoor-outdoor divide.

The primary suite extends toward a neighboring park in a 20-foot cantilever, capturing stunning park views while providing covered outdoor entertaining space below. This cantilever motif is echoed at the house’s entry, presenting a dramatic visual of a floating glass box.

Taking advantage of the wedge-shaped lot, the south façade is aligned with the diagonal property line creating interest, while the opposite façade steps back to increase light and views.

The layout is strategically zoned, placing public areas on the first floor and private bedrooms upstairs, except for a first-floor suite that can also function as an office. A partial basement provides secluded space for a media room and gym.

Materials are carefully chosen for understated elegance, featuring a façade of stucco, ipe, and fiber cement panels. Inside, a minimalist palette contrasts with natural elements, incorporating black, white, and grey tones with warm white oak and ipe.

Firm
Sheila Lee Davies Architecture

Project Location
Atlanta, Georgia

Completion Date
10/20/2023

Architects and Designers
Sheila Lee Davies, AIA
Jerry Goux, AIA
Brian Ahern

Structural Engineer
Stability Engineering

Landscape
Brandon Butler Landscape Design

General Contractor
Darby Construction

Interior Design
Cantoni

Photographer
Jonathan Hillyer