Staircases

The staircase was welded on site and sprayed in situ. “It’s the backbone of the house, so we had to get it right,” Cameron says.

The existing stairs were painted in a dark yet neutral blue-gray, with a runner on top that has a coordinating pop of orange. While most of the home's historic details were removed by former owners, Leech's team tried to preserve what they could.

When addressing the constant gradient diagonal line restriction, Nakamura and team used the constraint to strengthen the design. “The diagonal line restriction can be a negative factor, but we intentionally incorporated the limitation into the [roofline] of the traditional Japanese wooden architecture, elevating [it] to the atrium of the staircase,” says Nakamura.

A wood-clad bridge connects the common areas of the house to the private bedrooms.

The ground floor features a few of the home's main components: walnut, cement, and terrazzo. It's lit from a skylight above, where the home's three levels are all joined.

“The contractors did an amazing job restoring the old details, removing several layers of paint that was added over time, so they could be repainted in the best way,” says Ménage.

Ménage balanced the historic ornament with modern interventions, like the rebuilt wood staircase and glass handrail.

A steel staircase connects the living room to the new second story while acting as a functional sculpture in the space. Cameron repurposed the timber paneling from another building site.

The wall beneath the stairs holds hidden storage, including an Enomatic wine dispenser and Sub-Zero refrigerated drawers.

The staircase design was dictated by the need to let the light in – and spread it to the cellar below, which has now been finished into a children’s playroom. The staircase is suspended from the structural supports above it. “Engineers always write to me about this stair, because they're like, ‘Whoa, I can't believe you did that without stringers or anything like that,’” says Kaplan. “Because it's the opposite of how you'd ever normally design a stair.”

The home’s two levels used to be connected only by an external staircase. The architects reorganized the floor plan to insert a new indoor stair, which is bordered by a screen of steel cables grounded in stones the couple collected on their beach. The columnar lantern is by Stefan Gulassa, a local artist who made many of the home’s light fixtures.

Self-taught designer Tom Givone fixed up his 1882 row house in New York City over many years. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, the house—designed in 1882 by architect Gilbert Robinson Jr. to resemble an 18th-century mansion nearby—is an anomaly in steel-and-concrete New York.

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.

Clever cubby storage is incorporated into the base of the interior stairs, while the extra-deep stair treads provide flexible "stadium-style" seating for the kids.

In a family home in Mill Valley, California, Lauren Goldman of l’oro designs kept her clients’ goals of “modern yet accessible” in mind while also looking for opportunities to add functionality. This proved successful when she discovered that the empty space under the steel-and-glass stair landing was the perfect scale for children to sit and read under. The team was inspired to create a kid-sized library, turning a useless space into a perfectly cozy reading nook.

Sam Shah and Anne Suttles asked architect Kevin Alter to renovate their 1920s bungalow in Austin, Texas, and add an addition, which contains a living area downstairs and an office upstairs. They tucked an office nook under the stairs; the Eames chair is a hand-me-down from Shah’s father.