11 Homes That Take Staircase Design to the Next Level
In multi-level dwellings, moving between floors doesn't have to be the same old story. These homes from Dwell Magazine's print archive have found that sweet spot between utilitarian function and pure beauty, elevating the transitional passage with clever approaches to their respective spaces and materials.
A Plywood Staircase in Washington, D.C.
Though they give the appearance of bent plywood, each curved layer of this ribbed staircase's corridor was constructed with flat, laminated cutouts, including the rounded hand rail.
These stairs mimic the magic of "the ship"—a floating living room in the home— by appearing to float without support. "I drew the stairs like this, but I had no idea how to construct them," says architect and homeowner Pieter Weijnen, laughing. Project builder Jasper Kerkhofs came to the rescue, using two iron rods to fix each stair to the wall. Steel cables were added to guard the sides of the staircase.
A welded spiral staircase leads to the sleeping loft in this geodesic dome home.
Owner-architect Lyle Bradley moved the stairs in his home against a party wall, and a new skylight above the staircase now bathes both floors in natural light. In the living room, the stair's lower step reaches out to form an arm, while the ascending stairs create a natural incline for cushions.
This wooden staircase doubles as kitchen shelving in the English designer's home. Tyler hired David Restorick, a furniture maker and friend, to build a staircase that doubles as display space for Tyler's vast collection of colorful cookware.
Rising to a catwalk above, a huge glass-and-steel central stair envisioned by architect Filippo Caprioglio spans four floors of the Chiavellis’ newly expanded house.
Moseley notes the home’s distinctive staircase as one of her favorite features. "When the steel was ordered from the steelyard," she says, "it was marked with our metalworker’s name, for easy pickup. That scribble still exists in random places in the staircase and is very industrial—we love it!" Hand-welded by Mike Carman, a local contractor, the staircase runs through all three floors, and it was custom-sized to fit the dimensions of the shipping containers, measuring nine-feet-six-inches tall and eight-feet wide.
The same wood used in the Amsterdam home's kitchen appears in the exposed timber staircase and in the bathrooms.
A cylindrical glass staircase with Western red cedar and painted steel mullions dominates the front of the house. The stair treads, along with the floor, are made of recycled spotted gum.
Architect Alexandre Blouin designed a rectangular staircase at the center of this house, positioning it beneath an operable skylight that draws in sunshine that otherwise would have struggled to penetrate the core of the building, which is 50 feet deep.
Onwers Alex Gil and Claudia DeSimio reconfigured the space inside their 2,000-square-foot duplex, creating one open area to hold a monolithic "wedge core" to house the staircase. "The older the building, the more you can adhere to older codes, which gives you more liberty," says Gil, who heads the architecture firm Spacecutter.
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