stairs

The ground floor’s adjoining staircase, as well as the kitchen cabinets and tables, can be adjusted depending the homeowner's preferences. “The design of the house is an attempt to respond to [French novelist] Georges Perec’s question, ‘We should learn to live more on staircases. But how?’” Simpson says.

The containers are fused side-by-side, giving each apartment a 16-foot width. They are then stacked in four pairs with wrought, industrial-style exterior staircases in-between. To spare living space and installation headaches, a cinder block core houses utilities and a bathroom for each unit.

Plywood stair and bench seat adjacent to fireplace

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.