Page 54 - Construction Vision Sep-Oct 2017 issue

Would you live in a house

clinging to a cliff ?

A design for a home anchored to a sheer cliff face offers a striking

vista.But what would it take to live in such a place,asks Jon Kelly.

For sale: distinctive seaside property with According to the company's website, the crampons support a climber.
spectacular coastal views. Would suit high- plans were drawn up after a couple While people assume homes must be built
value buyer untroubled by vertigo. So far it approached the firm asking its designers to upwards from foundations in the ground, it's
only exists as a concept, but the design for explore how to build a holiday home along equally possibly in theory for them to be
the Cliff House by Modscape, an Australian “extreme parcels” of coast in Victoria. suspended or hung, says Hutchinson.
firm that designs and builds prefabricated There's a tradition of unconventional
homes, is enough to give a lurch to the Inspired by the way barnacles cling to a properties around the world including
stomach of anyone uneasy with heights. ship's hull, the design envisages that the floating homes underwater homes, and
house would be made up of five modules even ice hotels .
Here's the pitch – it features three connected by a lift and secured to the cliff But, he warns, “all of these things are
bedrooms (two doubles, the other en-suite), face using engineered steel pins. expensive because the construction
It might look precarious – and a hostage to industry hates anything unusual”. Any
a stylish living space, a carport, separate
coastal erosion – but there's no reason why prospective owner of the Cliff House would
bathroom and (tantalisingly or nausea-
the design shouldn't be structurally sound, need very deep pockets.
inducingly, depending on your tolerance of
says Maxwell Hutchinson, a former And that wouldn't be the only thing required
sheer drops) an open-air spa and barbecue
president of the Royal Institute of British of them, Hutchinson says. “It would have to
area on the bottom floor. Artfully minimalist
Architects. Cantilever beams drilled into the be someone with a very, very strong
interior décor focuses visitors' attention on
rock could support the building just as stomach.”
“transcendent views of the ocean”.
52 CONSTRUCTION VISION SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER