December 2013 Notable Book Review - Staircases: The Architecture of Ascent

Oscar Tusquets Blanca

Staircases

By Oscar Tusquets Blanca, Martine Dion, Adalaïde De Savray, Jérôme Cignard, and Jean Dethier
The Vendome Press (October 2013)
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Reviewer: Book Board member Norman Weinstein (ArchNewsNow.com)

Staircases: The Architecture of Ascent, by Oscar Tusquets Blanca, et al., 2013 (The Vendome Press)

Designing an outstanding staircase is not a challenge for the faint of heart. It is a daunting feat, since any notable staircase design is an exercise in matching the utilitarian need to traverse building levels with a designer’s wish to invent an individualistic artistic statement, a memorable monument evoking straightforward or curvilinear “poetry in motion.”

In this stunning coffee table book, a team of erudite European writers and world-class photographers offers an affectionate tribute to grand staircases. Their spotlight lingers upon the most monumentally grandiose staircases found in European palaces and other structures associated with the rich and famous from the Renaissance to the 19th century. Generously, the book offers an expansive (if concise) global survey of staircases pre-Renaissance, including examples of stairs (designs without guard rails and defining enclosed spaces) rather than strictly staircases. And a closing chapter on contemporary staircases includes I.M. Pei’s luminously futuristic staircase at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar and Norman Foster’s swirling City Hall for the Greater London Authority emanating vertiginous grandeur. Oddly, many of the most groundbreaking examples of modern staircases are omitted—think of Peter Eisenman’s inverted and column-interrupted staircases and that surreal vernacular stair complex in Mexico, Las Pozas, created by Edward James. But what this book does with considerable charm and visual flair is offer a mesmerizing meditation upon the richness of luxurious detail in inventive European staircase design, raising staircases from a necessary building element to a major gateway catalyzing movement into architectural experiences of a rare order.

One of the cast-iron spiral staircases in the State Law Library of Iowa in Des Moines (1884) Photo: Pierre Louis. From Staircases: The Architecture of Ascent by Oscar Tusquets Blanca, et al., courtesy of The Vendome Press

The access steps to the observatory overlooking the former industrial wasteland of Lausitzer Seenland, Senftenberg, Germany, 2008, designed by the Architektur & Landschaft group. Photo: Schuetze/Rodemann. From Staircases: The Architecture of Ascent by Oscar Tusquets Blanca, et al., courtesy of The Vendome Press

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