The Staircase: A Journey of Emotions

Almost all the buildings we know have vertical walls and horizontal floors, and almost all their dimensions, perceptions, and uses move within this orthogonal conception. Yet in nearly every one of them there is an exception: the staircase.

The inclination of the staircase enriches space, energizes it, and introduces an anomalous element into it.

The staircase also carries something unsettling. It exists in no man’s land — between two floors, belonging fully to neither. It is a place of transition. You are never truly on a staircase; rather, you are passing through it. While climbing or descending, you are en route to another place — yet, for that moment, you are nowhere.

Indomitable, the staircase refuses to be captured in a floor plan, for such drawings are horizontal — and the staircase is not. To represent it, we cheat: we draw only the beginning of the one that rises from this floor, letting it vanish above, and we trace only the final fragment of the one descending from below — the point of arrival or disembarkation — without even glimpsing the inconceivable void from which it emerges.

And often, beneath that very first flight, we squeeze in a storage room or a small toilet. But how far should we draw the staircase to show, at the same time, what lies beneath its sloping underside?

A Transit of the Soul

The staircase is the petrified trace of the upward or downward movement of those who use it. Every staircase recalls Duchamp’s famous painting — it is the narration of a journey.

We have already used the word “disembarkation”, because a staircase is a journey — a kind of stormy navigation — and when we reach the port of destination, we step off it safe and sound, disembarking relieved and finally at peace.

Moreover, those who lived as children in a house with a staircase will remember the fear it inspired. Do you feel it more when going up or coming down? We are in suspension, not yet where we are meant to be, anticipating what awaits us at the destination — perhaps a surprise, perhaps a shadow. We long to complete the passage once and for all, to arrive.

Interpreting that mixture of fear and emotion, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard observed that the basement staircase is always descended, because climbing it is trivial and forgettable; that the staircase between floors is climbed and descended; and that the attic staircase is always climbed.

A Score of Exact Harmony

Those who had a staircase in their childhood home will remember, for the rest of their lives, the joy of climbing or descending it two steps at a time, or by threes, or by fours, or on one leg — or, alas, sliding down the handrail.

For those no longer children, the staircase demands a physical effort they can no longer give so cheerfully. Changing levels is no trivial act. To do it successfully — and with a semblance of ease — requires a design that understands the rhythm of the steps, the acceleration of the heart, the breath between each rise.

Designing a staircase is like composing a score of exact harmony, one with precise, well-measured time.

Danger in Three Dimensions

The typical two-flight staircase can rise or descend through any number of floors without difficulty — and without much mystery. It is domesticated, contained within a rectangular opening, the stairwell, which aligns floor by floor. Such a staircase allows itself to be understood, even designed, because within its own space it contains both the arrival at one level and the departure to the next.

But other kinds of staircases — single-flight, spiral, or free-form — can suffer from the danger of bridling, that is, of lacking sufficient clearance above them to move comfortably, while some intrusive or contradictory element crosses their path in the most inconvenient way.

Designing one of these untamed, feral staircases is difficult, because they exist in three dimensions and often clash with the static world around them — a world that follows other intentions, another way of being. These staircases are always on the verge of escaping our control: they might bump our heads, rear up, or even throw us to the ground.

Given the many dangers inherent in stairs, building regulations — under the guise of safety — often stifle the possibility of conceiving anything truly evocative. They put an end to the spatial creativity of the staircase, unable to tolerate that anything unpredictable might happen upon it. What was meant to protect us from harm has also swept away the good — leaving behind only anodyne boredom.

The Defeat of the Elevator

The invention of the elevator once seemed to spell the end of the staircase. Yet now doctors recommend taking the stairs; claustrophobics prefer them; and, above all, in case of emergency, we are told not to trust treacherous mechanical devices, but to rely instead on the traditional sequence of solid, faithful steps and partitions.

And so, the staircase endures — more alive than ever — always inviting us to dance the tango or the pasodoble of its ascent and descent, while, if we still have enough breath, we can hum along or even whistle its tune.