If you’ve ever walked into a flagship Apple Store unconvinced of the magic of Cupertino’s products, a wondrous curvy, glass staircase might have softened your psyche.
Apple’s retail outlets are almost as well known for award-winning architecture and eye-catching staircases as for the MacBooks, iPads and iPhones on sale. But Apple Stores aren’t the only places to make vertical trips seem like a magical journey.
Amazing staircases
Dezeen Magazine, one of the foremost showcases for cutting-edge design and architecture, curates a Pinterest page devoted to staircase porn. The page features close to 600 different staircases and has more than 337,000 followers.
Featured here are 10 of Dezeen’s selections we think could inspire Apple’s architects. There’s nothing like clean lines and ethereal shapes to take your breath away before you even begin huffing and puffing up the steps.
1) The Ribbon Chapel
Two curving, ribbonlike staircases wrap around a wedding chapel designed by Tokyo architect Hiroshi Nakamura. The Ribbon Chapel overlooks the Seto Inland Sea on the grounds of the hotel Bella Vista Sakaigahama.
2) Elastic Staircase
The Elastic Staircase, above, doesn’t lead anywhere and is impossible to walk all the way around. Designed by NEXT Architects, this pathway is located in a suburb near Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and actually wraps around the underside.
3) A floating staircase
Design studio Hidden Fortress designed a floating box of a staircase for the Berlin homeware store, Bazar Noir. The outside of the staircase is painted black, offering a surprise to the shopper when they see the blonde wood set of stairs.
4) ‘Warm heart’
Haworth Thompkins renovated a warehouse for a theater company in London and pulled together a complicated space with this staircase. Haworth Thompkins describes the staircase as the “warm heart of the building.”
5) Elegant spiral
This spiral staircase rises through a residence in Japan designed by Takeshi Hosaka Architects.
6) Labyrinth
The Labyrinth is an interconnected staircase at park near the Bang Saen Beach in Thailand. It was designed by Bangkok’s Supermachine Studio.
7) Surrounded by timbers
Hang on to the railing when you ascend these steps at Hotel Hotel in Canberra, Australia. Your head will move independently of your feet as look at the pieces of reclaimed timber that surround the staircase. March Studio of Melbourne was commissioned to design a lobby that joins apartments with the hotel.
8) Connecting a family
The U-shaped staircase joins floors and different generations of one family in this Mumbai home. It was designed by Arquitectura en Movimiento Workshop of Mexico.
9) Modern meets stone farmhouse
Old and new can live in harmony as architect Elisabete Saldanha displays with this white spiral staircase in a converted stone farmhouse in Portugal.
10) Living Staircase
10. The Living Staircase was designed by Paul Cocksedge Studio to inspire creativity in this London SoHo office building.
