Innsholm House, main stair · Innsholm
The Green Stair
A stair window in a private house, seen from four landings and never straight on. Designed to be read in fragments, going up.
Completed2018
Lights4 lights over 3 stages
Panels27 panels
Glazed area10.2 m²
GlassSaint-Just and Lamberts, eleven greens
Came11 mm H; 15 mm at stage joins
Firings29
JobNew window
The window
Nobody stands still on a stair. This sounds obvious and it is routinely ignored — stair windows get designed flat on a bench and then installed somewhere they will only ever be seen from underneath, at an angle, in motion.
We built a plywood mock-up of the stair in the studio, at the real rake, and drew the cartoon on the glass hung at the real height. Everything in the lowest stage is drawn about fifteen per cent wider than it wants to be, because from the hall floor you see it foreshortened and it corrects.
Eleven greens
The client asked for green and then, at the second meeting, said the word she actually meant was wet. That is a much better brief. Wet green is not one colour, it is a bottle green next to a yellow-green next to a green so blue it is arguably blue, and the transitions between them have to be abrupt, because water does not gradate.
The half-landing
Stage 2 is the only place where you see all four lights and all three stages at once, and it is where the window resolves. Everything above and below is composed to lead the eye to that one standing position. It is about eleven seconds of anyone’s day and it is what the window is for.
Panel by panel
Stage 1
Seen only from below, at a steep angle. Everything in it is drawn wider than it should be.
Stage 2
The half-landing. The only place in the house you see the whole window at once.
Stage 3
Read while walking. Nothing in it takes more than a second to understand.
Join
15 mm came at the stage joins, structural rather than decorative, and painted out with cement to disappear.
Elsewhere
