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A Look at Staircases
February 1, 2013
Whether you're going up or going down, an artfully constructed staircase never takes you in the wrong direction. Take a look at some of our favorite examples, taken from our photo library from issues past.
For his renovated apartment inside a nineteenth-century palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, architect Rytis Mikulionis designed a white steel staircase to lead from the living area up to the bedroom platform. He assembled it by bending thick sheets of metal and applying thin boards of stained oak. It rises about seven feet and has no banisters. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Palace Intrigue
Yang Yeo descends the spiral staircase that connects the public and private spaces inside his house in Singapore’s Joo Chiat neighborhood. The building, an 85-year-old shophouse, is quite narrow and very deep—about 16 by 68 feet. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Straight and Narrow
There wasn’t enough room for a conventional stairway on artist Tad Beck's Los Angeles roof deck, so designer Riley Pratt chose an industrial model from Lapeyre Stair, a New Orleans–based manufacturer. Its alternating tread design makes walking up a cinch—even for Beck’s Lab mix, Little Bear. Beck recalls that when he told the company he wanted a stairway for his home, they weren’t interested in selling to him. But he persevered and called back the next day and said he needed it for his warehouse, and the order went right through. Read the full article here.
Courtesy of
Dave Lauridsen
![“The stair [by Lapeyre Stair] is very cost-effective, as compared to building woodwork,” Woo explains. “It occupies very little space, and you can come down without holding the rail.” Of the small gap that reveals the kitchen, he says, “That’s very import](http://archive.dwell.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_photo/public/2013/02/01/puzzle-loft-stairs.jpg?itok=fca1LC6P "puzzle-loft-stairs")
“The stair [by Lapeyre Stair] is very cost-effective, as compared to building woodwork,” explains Wonbo Woo, whose father, architect Kyu Sung Woo, transformed a cramped New York apartment into a loft for him. “It occupies very little space, and you can come down without holding the rail.” Of the small gap that reveals the kitchen, he says, “That’s very important, to give a sense of continuous space.” Read the full article here.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Big City, Little Loft
Im and David Schafer's one-room, 426-square-foot loft in downtown San Diego features a stairway to the sleeping loft that's a riff on a ship's ladder: "We spent a lot of time figuring out how much space we need to maneuver," says David. "It allowed us to make it as small and perfect as we wanted to." Instead of a handrail, sail cleats are bolted to the walls as hand-holds. Read the full article here.
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Originally appeared in Living Room
Inside Greg Reitz's Los Angeles home, the entryway features fly-ash concrete floors and stairs cut from recycled steel. Conscious of the life-cycle of the materials he chose, he settled steel instead of wood on the grounds that it would last longer and would not harbor termites or mold. Read the full article here.
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Originally appeared in Taking His Own Advice
Becca and Doug Worple have a vacation house on a horseshoe-shaped island on Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada. Architect Michael Meredith of MOS created stairs that feature a geometric pattern of holes generated by a software script that allows rain to slip through to the lake below. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Floating House, Lake Huron
Inside his renovated 140-year-old farmhouse in Pittsburgh, Jeff Walz installed unfinished, black, welded-steel railing borders for steps made of framing lumber, which emit a friendly, old-fashioned creak as Walz treads up and down. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Originally appeared in Pittsburgh Steeler
Darcy Miro and her husband, Lars Weiss, built a four-story town house in Brooklyn. For the banisters and railings around their reading loft, they selected aluminum-magnesium Speed-Rail. They liked the “inexpensive industrial” look it provided, explains Miro, and that it seemed “smooth, sturdy, and honest.” The system consists of lengths of pipe and prefabricated brackets that simply slip together and tighten with set screws. Read the full article here.
Courtesy of
Dean Kaufman
The stairs going up the knoll to a roof garden and to an Anchorage, Alaska, house’s second-level entrance are made from Cor-Ten steel risers (which develop a rich, rusted patina) and are filled with gravel in order to create a nonslip surface that drains well. The steel and steelwork is by Virginia Industrial. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Courtesy of
Dave Lauridsen
Originally appeared in Time Is on My Site
To lead up to the master bedroom inside their Santa Monica, California, residence, husband-and-wife architecture team Lawrence Scarpa and Angela Brooks created a perforated metal staircase, lit from above, that casts a Sigmar Polke–like shadow grid on the concrete floor. Read the full article here.
Photo by
Courtesy of
Darcy Hemley
Originally appeared in Solar Inspiration
For his renovated apartment inside a nineteenth-century palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, architect Rytis Mikulionis designed a white steel staircase to lead from the living area up to the bedroom platform. He assembled it by bending thick sheets of metal and applying thin boards of stained oak. It rises about seven feet and has no banisters. Read the full article here.
Photo by Hertha Hurnaus.
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