Stairways by Richard Landry

Richard Landry, AIA
Landry Design Group, president and founder

A staircase can be a functional, discreet feature or it can make a statement. In a traditional, French-inspired home, a grand staircase can fulfill a client’s dreams, while modern environments can provide opportunities to create something sculptural. Since the stair is a reflection of the house style, it should connect to the design.

Photo: Erhard Pfeiffer

For this sleek monument to modernism in California’s Hollywood Hills, the staircase doubles as sculpture, wrapped by an exterior glass wall and supported by a structural spine underneath that makes the stair appear to float.

Photo: Roger Davies

This staircase isn’t viewed in isolation but echoes the home’s prevailing curvilinear theme. As you come upon it and ascend, you feel the wave in the Zaha Hadid-designed marble wall panels and how it changes, and the wall’s visual movement is exciting.

Photo: Erhard Pfeiffer

In this Italian-style country home where we continued the stone from the exterior to inside the stair tower, the railing is appropriate to that language.

RELATED

• Stairways by Gatehouse Partners

• A Seattle woodworker is earning a reputation as a stair artist (and tubs too)

• Four architects present their approaches for designing stairs to deliver spatial drama, transition, and procession.