IANAPWD but I believe initially it was to get more daylight down to street level. When skyscrapers became the default new building in downtown NYC, the streets got darker and darker and the city wanted to avoid that. I think I heard that during a documentary about building the Empire State Building.
Famously, the Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright.
It’s a bad render. I pass quite close to it on my commute so I have been watching it growing. It looks pretty cool in reality. Here is (currently) the last page of the huge thread on Skyscrapercity. Lots of photos of the work in progress.
BTW lots of Tudor and mock-Tudor buildings have projecting upper stories, e.g. this street in Chester.
The Slovak Radio building in Bratislava is another example of an upside-down pyramid.
And don’t forget upside down houses.
I’m very amused that a picture of the Jawa sand-crawler appeared in those results. (perhaps not for others, I understand Google will use your cookie and customize the results, even if you don’t have an account)
This is the one that I expected to see first in the thread. It really gave me a case of vertigo or something when I walked by it, I felt like it was going to fall on me no matter where I was standing.
I did not go in.
Roddy
The Citigroup Center building in Manhattan is another with a prominent cantilever. The reason is that there was a church at the building site that wanted to remain in place but not be attached to the office building. And about a year after the Citigroup Center was completed, the structural engineer figured out a major mistake he made in the design. They had to weld on additional braces at night to deal with the issue.
And then there’s this.
Northern Sweden is full of hay barns like these:
http://www.algonet.se/~mats-nil/nff/bilder/sommar_ladrike.jpg
These cube houses in Rotterdam.
Well that is just an artist’s impression. I don’t think the finished thing is going to look to dissimilar though.
I do like the artists impression for the top floor that is going to be a garden.
Of course if you are in the garden looking out you don’t actually have to see the building itself.
I came in here to post those.
“At night”??
Not sure it counts since it has supports. Library of Science and Medicine at Rutgers University.
The old Central Bus Station, Haifa, Israel.
500 years old, and it’s still standing (just!)
Fa-reaky! They look cool, but I feel like you’d be losing a not insignificant amount of usable space.