How to create a floating staircase
We continue our Behind the Design series, where we take one beautiful element of a project and explain how it was designed and built. This month Allan looks at floating staircases
Architect Allan Corfield goes ‘behind the design’, detailing the work involved in creating this coveted contemporary design feature and the potential costs
In most new-build homes, stairs are built from cheap materials and hidden away in the smallest space possible. Obviously, the primary purpose of stairs is getting you from one floor to another, but they are also an opportunity to create an eyecatching and enjoyable piece of design in your new home.
As a practice, when we design a new home, we try to link it all together with a central atrium, and put a feature stair at its heart.the stunning floating staircase you see here is one of my favourite examples of this in practice, and what makes it more satisfying is that it was created by our design team and the selfbuilder rather than a specialist stair supplier.
The simple-looking straight flight is made from high quality oak, glass and metal, and appears to float from the wall.with a staircase, as with most design features, it’s often the case that the simpler it looks, the more complex it was to build.
If you have £15k to £20k to spend and you want a top-class contemporary stair without any risk, then there are a number of specialist companies, such as Angus and Mack and Bisca, that
can help you. However, most self-builders, like our client on this project, don’t have that kind of money. If that’s you, but you want the feature… then read on!
How it’s done…
A standard stair has treads spanning two stringers (supports). As you can see, this stair appears to have no stringers. In fact, a single steel stringer is hidden behind the plasterboard wall, supporting cantilevered metal treads. Each tread is fabricated out of two 120x60x6cm rectangular hollow sections, with an oak shoe slipped over the top to give a stunning, solid-looking finish that doesn’t extend to the wall or glass, creating a shadow gap.
The treads also provide support for the glass balustrade, which is fixed in place using pre-stressed glazing bolts in predrilled holes.the glass is 17.5mm heat-soaked toughened laminate. This robust specification is important, as the balustrade must be able to support itself and provide the necessary barrier loading required by the Building Regulations (Part K in England).
In a domestic situation, you don’t necessarily need to have a handrail on top of a glass balustrade (this self-build is in Scotland — regulations/standards differ in Scotland). However our client opted to add a circular brushed-metal handrail.this was for three reasons: comfort, safety, and to limit the amount of cleaning that the glass would need. Touching a glass balustrade every time you go up and down the stairs would leave lots of noticeable fingerprints!
These are the same materials and components that a specialist stair company might use to provide this stair, so where did the cost saving come from? It was in the work that the client took on. Rather than going to one main contractor to provide the finished item, he went to the individual suppliers and sourced everything himself.this could only happen after we created the initial concept and a specialist engineer (in this case, Clear Structures) had designed the structural elements, but after that the stair was made up of a set of components that any self-builder could order. The steelwork was fabricated by a local company, the oak was sourced from a flooring company and the glass sheets were ordered from a glass company. Templates were formed from the engineer’s drawings, checked on site, then sent to the glass company for fabrication. All of the components were brought together and fitted by the client and his team on site.
This approach saved around £10k; however, this way of working is not without risk. The client was ordering each individual element, including glass panels, which needed to be millimetre accurate — there was a very real possibility of elements not fitting, which could have affected quality or created additional costs. In this case, we think that the risk and level of effort put in by the client was worth it — the result is stunning!
We hope that this feature will inspire you to design in a stunning feature staircase when you build your dream home.
NEXT MONTH:
Integrating Corten cladding into your project