Simply put, stairs connect floors vertically, allowing movement and circulation between levels. At LOM, our workplace design celebrates stairs that take these simple terms seriously.
Unity Place, our newly completed headquarters for Santander UK, has an open feature staircase at its heart. Circulatory, vitalising, and connective, the staircase’s crisscross geometries define and defy its surroundings, animating the clean, linear form of the building, and linking collaborative spaces across each floor.
Moving up or down a staircase, your perspective shifts in real time. Changing thresholds and new points of view can energise the chance interactions a circulatory space enables. Through deliberate design decisions, stairs are now becoming increasingly flexible – doubling as theatres, town halls, and break-out social spaces, while serving as the circulation routes around a building. A multipurpose staircase can become a building’s beating heart, a vertical town-square of storeys and stories. It can be a point of arrival, focus, or departure; it can be a space people meet, and congregate, or a stage for announcements.
Intrinsically, a staircase also promotes well-being – and when done right, can encourage social interaction. Stairs help to create the flexibility that workplaces of the future need – so at LOM we always encourage our clients to celebrate their stairs!
