Hotel AKA NoMad, New York [US]

EeStairs + Lissoni & Partners + Jeffrey Totaro

When the interior spaces in this luxurious hotel in Madison Avenue, New York, were redesigned one of the greatest challenge was how to create a wide feature staircase that would produce visual drama, rising through a two-level space between structural columns that were less than three metres apart. We used 3D scanning at various design and fabrication stages to ensure that the stairs would fit in with great accuracy.

In what is already a visually busy space, in terms of structure and furniture, the design achieves two important outcomes: the balustrade, made by EeStairs, is a smooth and continuous sheet of carbon steel which was later primed and painted to give a patinated finish that is rather like antique bronze; the strength and stiffness of the balustrades makes the stairs self-supporting – no need for any visible propping.

The staircase was also challenging to install, but as in many other projects involving tight spaces, the EeStairs installation team used a spider-crane to position the stairs without touching the closely spaced columns, which were a few inches away from the balustrades, at any stage.