FOLIO
Composite spiral staircase
Client
Officine Sandrini
Folio is a spiral staircase where all the main features are embedded in a single module: there is no difference between form, structure, and aesthetic. The iteration of the monolithic fiber-reinforced composites step, designs a spiral curve in space, the force line of the staircase.
Each component supports the previous and the next, the only variation would occur in the top and bottom pieces that connect to landings. Behind the simplicity of the single component, the whole becomes a complex system to articulate a special effect.
The design process was driven by the idea of making things with fewer components that do more, a research of a synthesis to shape structure and elegance.
The shape emerged from a desire of research on these aspects of essentialism, translated and analyzed into a geometry of the stripe (the subject) wrapping around an imaginary column (the action). The main design issue was to refine the single step in deep relationship with the others, in other words, working on the single, in the whole.
The module is flexible, but the mutual interdependence of the components generate redundancy that stabilizes the system. The connections between the pieces generate two load stripes, that together compose the back spine of the staircase. There are two possible structural configurations of these spirals: in the first case, both spirals gravitate to the ground, in the second case, the lower spiral goes down and the upper one is suspended from the ceiling.