Floating staircases always make a big impact, but rarely do they actually look like they’re just wisps of clouds spiraling through a living space. Prior to renovation, the three floors of this home weren’t connected by a single staircase, leading the basement walkout level to feel distanced from the first and second floors. KOS Architects and Atelier Zerebecky wanted to give the villa a sense of liberating weightlessness, a space that feels fresh and light amid the noisy clamor of urban China.

The staircase itself is strikingly sculptural within a central vaulted space, with all of the home’s main rooms connected to it: the living room, entertaining spaces, kitchen, gym, theater and bedrooms. A gradient of opaque white on the glass railings gives it its signature atmospheric look. The balustrade hides the structural steel so the stairs can appear to float on air.

The client wanted something grand and ostentatious without being gaudy, the architects explain.

“Our first gesture was to create a unified space as the backbone of the home – a large double-height vaulted ceiling creates a sense of grandeur without resorting to the extravagance of Loius XIV décor and gold leaf ornament, something so prevalent in the high end residential market of suburban China. Our doubly curved vault maximizes the ceiling height beneath a suburban pitched roof architecture while creating a smooth venetian plastered volume that exhibits the play of natural light. This space houses the ceremonial entrance, the formal living area, fireplace and a new glass staircase.”

The rest of the home feels equally light and airy, including a pink child’s bedroom with its own slide. More photos are available at the Atelier Zerebecky website.

Photos by Highlite Images Taipei

Staircase mishaps cause a surprising number of accidental deaths every year (second only to car crashes), but the sleekness of these floating designs might make you want to live dangerously all the same. Who needs handrails? (Okay, a lot of us need handrails. But still.)

Helical Stone Staircase by Webb Yates

Developed for a private residence by Webb Yates Engineers and The Stonemasonry Company, this helical stone staircase features steps made of individual blocks of stone. The trick to holding it together is the insertion of two 12.9-millimeter steel cables through the center of the stairs, post-tensioned after assembly to support the load. That sounds simpler than it really is. The steps were also profiled into a ‘spine’ shape to reduce their weight. The staircase became the first 320-degree self-supported stone staircase in the world.

Integrated Field by Baan Moom

These gorgeous floating steps are positioned right beneath a skylight for an even more dramatic effect, inside a Thai home for a family of five by Baam Moom / Integrated Field.

Apartment in Luxembourg by Metaform Architects

A striking modern home in Luxembourg produced as a collaboration between Metaform Architects and the street artist SUMO aims to bring urban residences into the ‘post-graffiti’ world, contrasting areas of color with blank palettes of white. The latter is seen here in a curving, seemingly unsupported staircase.

Floating Stairs in Portugal by Feedback-studio

No railings, no problem! Feedback-studio designed these barely-there stairs for their Amaral Loft project in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, a private commission.

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Stairs As Light As Air 13 Floating Designs Thatll Raise Your Heart Rate

Stairs are inherently utilitarian, but some architects choose to really step up their interiors with highly sculptural designs that make you want to walk up and down a bunch of times. Cantilevered creations, floating stairs, spirals made of stone and zig-zagging graphic designs add both literal and figurative movement to these apartments, museums, offices and shops.

Stone and Wire in London by Groupwork + Amin Taha

During the completion of a renovation on a terraced house in central London dating to the 1950s, Groupwork + Amin Taha created a gorgeous centerpiece with this stone staircase, spiraling around a central cylinder-shaped wire cage, which acts as a balustrade. The load-bearing cantilevered travertine staircase extends from the basement to a skylight in the apartment’s roof.

Atrium Stairs at Moscow’s Dominion Office Building by Zaha Hadid

There’s something very futuristic-looking about the stark, graphic black-and-white stairs zig-zagging through the atrium of Zaha Hadid’s ‘Dominion Office Building.’ Each level is slightly offset from the next, producing a disorienting effect when looking down at the stairs from the edge of any of the balconies.

Mirrored Staircase at Kaleidoscope House by Paul Raff Studio

Sometimes, all it takes is a little creativity to produce a stunning effect, rather than a large space and expensive materials. The staircase ascending through Paul Raff Studio’s Kaleidoscope House features mirrored side panels on the balustrade which continue onto the landings of each level, reflecting each other so you can’t quite tell what’s real and what’s reflection. This piece is the heart of the home’s ‘kaleidoscope effect.’

Plywood Puzzle Stairs in London House by Tsuruta Architects

This staircase in a London Home renovated by Tsuruta Architects consists of nearly 2,000 plywood pieces slotted together like a puzzle. Replacing a larger staircase with a more compact design, this new creation connects all four stories without visually obstructing the transitional spaces between them, allowing light to filter through.

Smooth Staircase at Singapore Apple Store by Foster + Partners

It’s not unusual for Apple stores in larger cities to function as showcases for architecture nearly as much as they do for electronics. In this case, internationally renowned firm Foster + Partners augmented “the greenest Apple space yet” with two hand-carved spiraling staircases made of Italian Castagna Stone. The architects describe them as “warm and beautifully sculpted bookends” in an “homage to craftsmanship and materiality.”

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A Few Steps Higher 14 Unusually Artistic Modern Staircase Designs

More than just a means of advancing from one level of a building to the next, staircases are an opportunity for drama and sculptural flair, like a permanent art installation built into the structure. Spiraling toward skylights, carved into a building’s exterior or planted with lush gardens, these incredible modern staircases are the defining feature of the houses, museums and offices the occupy.

Experimentarium by CEBRA, Denmark

This incredible 328-foot-long helix staircase by CEBRA at one of Denmark’s top science centers is made of 160 tons of steel and 10 tons of copper, spiraling up through the four-story atrium.

Salvador Dali Museum by HOK, St. Petersburg, Florida

At HOK’s Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, a stunning surrealist design befitting the artist being honored contains a spiral staircase that curls up toward the skylight even when the stairs end, like a vine stretching toward the sun.

Victoria & Albert Museum Stairs by Stuart Haygarth, London

Pieces of colorful framing typically used to frame art in museums becomes art in and of itself in this staircase installation by UK designer Stuart Haygarth at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Nearly 2,000 feet of cut-off framing pieces are joined, sanded and painted “to create a work akin in 3D graffiti on a traditional staircase reminiscent of the yellow brick road in ‘The Wizard of Oz,”” as the designer explains.

Interrobang Building by Bang by Min, Seoul

Rarely is a modern structure – particularly one shaped like a tower – so defined from outside by its exterior staircases. The firm Bang by Min ‘carved’ a staircase into the concrete block of the Interrobang mixed-use building in Seoul.

The Living Staircase by Paul Cocksedge

Commissioned for the creative office development Ampersand in London, ‘The Living Staircase’ by Paul Cocksedge features integrated planting areas along the balustrade as a functional garden.

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Stepping It Up 15 Spectacularly Sculptural Modern Staircases

Shaped like a book, a cultural facility on the boundary between a residential neighborhood and industrial area in a suburb of Incheon, South Korea acts as a smooth visual segue-way. Placed on a narrow site, the concrete structure measures just four meters wide and features an eye-catching zig-zagging wooden staircase leading from the ground floor to the first level.

The building acts as a visual landmark for a town that lost its identity, a feeling the architects at Studio Gaon liken to an old man without fingerprints. The town of Gajwa-dong was once a fishing village positioned on the edge of the sea, but land reclamation projects re-routed the water. Views of the waves have now turned into bustling highways and unremarkable factory buildings.

The owner of a 400-year-old house next door donated the oddly-shaped plot to the community after discovering that what he thought was his neighbor’s land was actually his own, with the request that the new structure act as a screen between his home and the industrial buildings next door.

The resulting Sinjinmal building feels calm and solid with its cast-concrete walls bearing wood grain textures and expanses of glazing flooding the interiors with light. The zig-zag stairs outside reference those of a historic South Korean pavilion, while the interior stairs are painted bright red “suggesting past time, present, and future alterations.” A full-height, full-width glass door on the second floor seminar room pivots open to a terrace with the help of a manual winch.