A couple in Australia owned a piece of land on the southwestern coast of Australia. They wanted a unique vacation home design for it, so they approached Modscape, an architectural firm near Melbourne. Modscape produced this design concept: a house that's hanging off the edge of the cliff, giving a panoramic and perhaps terrifying view of the ocean.
Modscape proposes anchoring the house to the cliff with steel pins driven into the cliff face. Prefabricated modules would hang off the pins. Residents would enter the home through the carport, which is at surface level. An elevator provides access to lower levels which offer an unobstructed view of the raging seas below.
All of this sounds really expensive. Perhaps the owners should try to find a builder who's willing to improvise and user cheaper materials.
-via Inhabitat
If they make the house a nice rectangle with window-washer channels in the trim, they can rig a full roof on the 'garage level' and use a standard high-rise window washer track and washer trapeze solution - Not Cheap, but still less over time than calling out a truck crane and a man-basket every time you want to clean the windows.
And then they need to have exposed I beams on the bottom of the lowest level to rig scaffolding from, to paint and maintain the bottom patio level - same thing with a small gap away from (or carved into) the cliff to maintain the hidden side and the anchorages.
And under the stairs on the Patio level, a hatch with a rope ladder and a big drum to deploy it for an Emergency Exit to the beach - pray the fire happens at low tide.