House

[The Taboo]

There’s something fabulous about optical illusions that deceive the eye and play tricks on the mind. The Balancing Barn is no different, as it seems to hover in thin air, its reflective steel tiles gleaming in the sun, teasing passersby. The silver façade nods nostalgically to vintage airstream trailers, while clean lines of the pitched-roof barn are modern and minimalistic. Simple in structure and epic in proportions, the barn precariously balances on the precipice of nature a few miles inland from the Suffolk Coast in England. Dutch firm MVRDV designed the house to hover dramatically over a ledge, cantilevering over the landscape and providing inhabitants a unique vantage point of the surrounding meadows, woods and pond. In a world where Photoshop runs rampant, we can say without hesitation that this illusion is no slight of hand (nor mouse!)