Unveiled this morning at the London Design Festival 2013 press preview, the design comprises a complex configuration of steps to be made from 44 cubic metres of tulipwood. Visitors will be invited to climb the structure and use it as a viewpoint towards the River Thames, Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern.

"Endless Stair is a three-dimensional exercise in composition, structure and scale," said dRMM co-founder Alex de Rijke. "The Escher-like game of perception and circulation in timber playfully contrasts with the religious and corporate environment of stone and glass in the city."

The structure will be made of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels, which are usually created by layering up softwoods to form cheap and stable panels for fast construction. This installation will instead use a sustainable hardwood - tulipwood - to form lighter and stronger hardwood CLT panels for the first time.

The Endless Stair will be created in association with the American Hardwood Export Council and engineered by Arup. A lighting scheme for the spot will be developed by London studio Seam Design using products from LED company Lumenpulse.

The same team delivered Amanda Levete's Timber Wave installation outside the V&A museum for the 2011 London Design Festival. The American Hardwood Export Council worked with Royal College of Art students on twelve wooden chairs at last year's festival.

Alex de Rijke is dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London. Previous architecture projects by dRMM include a golden wedding chapel by the seaside and a house with mobile walls and roof.

The London Design Festival 2013 takes place from 14 to 22 September. See more design events taking place throughout the year on our World Design Guide.

See more unusual staircases »
See more projects by dRMM »

dRMM's Sliding House features in the Dezeen Book of Ideas. Special offer: buy the book now for just £10 »

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Positioned on the northern shore of the river near the village of Rio de Moinhos, the structure is built on the site of an old fishing boat dock that had fallen out of use due to regular flooding.

Ateliermob's brief was to create a public installation on the site. To withstand the changing water levels, the intervention needed a solid structure that would resist decay even if submerged for a few days a year.

The chunky concrete bleachers rise up in a northerly direction, facing a stage that cantilevers out across the riverbank. A telescope is mounted at the very top, while rectangular concrete benches and tables provide a picnic area on one side.

"The new element wipes out the boundary between land and water, projecting itself on the river, and on a flat terrain it erupts in the air as a reference in the landscape," say the architects.

The Rio de Moinhos Open-Air Theatre is the latest in a series of riverside installations designed by Ateliermob for the banks of the Tagus since 2007.

Other amphitheatres on Dezeen include a summer theatre in Estonia and a stage set in Sicily designed by OMA.

Photography is by Zoraima de Figueiredo.

Read on for more details from Ateliermob:

Rio de Moinhos Open Air Theatre

Following an international competition for the banks of the Tagus River in four counties in central Portugal where ateliermob got the first prize, they were asked to design three projects in the municipality of Abrantes.

Located on the right bank of the Tagus River, near the village of Rio de Moinhos, the Cais das Barcas served as a fishing boat dock and transported people and goods between the two banks. Over the years, that space lost its essence, both due to the nearly non-existent maintenance as the constant flooding of the Tagus (the height of the pier is +18.00 m, and the 1979 flood overflowed the river, which rose to 31.00 m).

Following a study of the dynamics of the local population, which can be characterised as having intense activity in recreational and popular associations, and it was understood that an outdoor space that could serve as an informal area for groups and communities and that could withstand submersion for a few days of the year. The new element wipes out the boundary between land and water, projecting itself on the river, and on a flat terrain it erupts in the air as a reference in the landscape.

The project seeks to recreate a place that spring-starts from the renovation of the pier, adding new collective reference meanings and uses. A new space for the local people that acts as a gathering place for the community or as an idyllic meeting place. The entire area around the auditorium, parallel to the existing dock, is redrawn maintaining its natural character, yet providing it with urban furniture – benches and tables for a more effective use by the population. Rio de Moinhos has experienced a difficult relationship with the river, noticeable its urban morphology - from times of flooding to times of drought. Every year, during the rainy season, this structure may become partially submerse.

The proposed structure seeks to reclassify the area, creating a new meeting space for the local community. When no events are taking place, this amphitheatre will be ideal to contemplate the river, the landscape and from its highest point, Rio de Moinhos.

Project: Rio de Moinhos Open Air Theatre
Place: Rio de Moinhos, Abrantes, Portugal
Promoter: Câmara Municipal de Abrantes (city council)
Construction: Construforte – Sociedade de construções e Empreitadas, Lda
Architecture: ateliermob - Andreia Salavessa and Tiago Mota Saraiva with Vera João, João Torres, Ana Luísa Cunha, Zofia Józefowicz and Sophia Walk (competition: Carolina Condeço, Nuno Ferreira)
Structures: Betar Estudos - José Pedro Venâncio and Maria do Carmo Vieira
Lights: João Pedro Osório

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by Ateliermob appeared first on Dezeen.

This half-scale model of a spiral staircase by American studio Matter Design is made from concrete treads that slip neatly over each other.

Above and top: photograph by Brandon Clifford

The Helix staircase by Matter Design was built at a reduced size to make it easier for the designers to experiment with heavy concrete modules.

The staircase also "celebrates its impracticality" at a smaller size, said designers Brandon Clifford and Wes McGee: "It is both column and stair, yet hangs from the ceiling. Its uncertainty and changed scale inject playful characteristics into the surrounding space, while maintaining an allegiance to the past and known."

The treads were cast in a rubber mould clamped down by a carved wood mother-mould and then steamed for 12 hours to cure.

To build the staircase, each tread was hooked over a vertical rod and slotted against the tread below before being bolted down.

The design is on show until 15 May next to another staircase inside BSA Space, home of the Boston Society of Architects, as part of this year's Design Biennial Boston.

We've featured a couple of concepts for spiral staircases recently, including one based on a whale's backbone and another with fibreglass steps – see all staircases.

Other indoor uses for concrete include a lamp with a magnetic concrete base and a lamp shaped like a military listening device – see all concrete design.

Photographs are courtesy of Matter Design except where stated.

Here's some more information from the designers:

Matter Design has announced the release of Helix as part of the Design Biennial Boston 2012 Exhibition at the Boston Society of Architects Space. This project is part of Matter Design’s research trajectory towards a contemporary stone architecture. Brandon Clifford and Wes McGee’s participation in this year’s Design Biennial Boston made this project possible.

As Clifford and McGee explain: "We have a pre-occupation with the translation of ancient and often lost methods into contemporary culture and practice. Helix is a product of an ongoing research agenda that centres on volume as an area of architectural exploration."

Helix is a half-scale spiral stair. While this reduced size resolves a number of practical concerns —weight, liability, access — the piece celebrates its impracticality. It is both column and stair, yet hangs from the ceiling. Its uncertainty and changed scale inject playful characteristics into the surrounding space, while maintaining an allegiance to the past and known.

A second preoccupation of Clifford and McGee is what they term "plastic rhetoric". The solid, heavy and volumetric action of casting concrete transforms a liquid matter into a solid mass that wants to crack. The stair's rounded, plastic and curvaceous treads reflect the material's earlier liquid state. Its twisting accelerates as it wraps around the support column, appearing to re-plasticise the figure. The entire construct's organic and malleable appearance is counterintuitive in light of the zero-tolerance system of nesting and keying from unit to unit.

On Material and Fabrication

The stair is produced with precast unreinforced concrete. These treads are unreinforced to test some claims as the team move closer and closer to stone as a testing material. Unreinforced concrete has little to no tensile capacity making this project a structural prototype in collaboration with Matthew Johnson of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. Each tread is cast in a fully encapsulated custom mould. These moulds are rubber with a solid wood mother-mould to clamp the assembly together. The moulds are vibrated rigorously during the pouring process and then immediately steamed for twelve hours to cure.

On Methods of Making

The entire stair assembly hangs from a beam two storeys tall. This beam then drops down a threaded rod to a base that serves as a pendulum balance. Each tread is designed to hook over this threaded rod and be bolted down to its neighbour below. The geometry of these treads lock into each other with a series of three-dimensional keys that reduce any shear or slipping between units. Typically a stone spiral stair is held from the perimeter. In this case, the stair is compressed in the column to ensure stability.

Credits: Brandon Clifford & Wes McGee — Matter Design

Structural: Matthew Johnson—Simpson Gumpertz & Heger

Project Team: Aaron Willette, Austin Smith, Christopher Miller, Daniel Clark, Edrie Ortega, Elizabeth Galvez, Enas AlKuhdairy, Johanna Lobdell, Justin Gallagher, Lina Kara’in, Luisel Zayas, Matthew Sherman, Patrick Little, Rebecca Priebe, Sixto Cordero

Acknowledgements: Fabrication support by the University of Michigan TCAUP FABLab and Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. Material donations by Boston Sand and Gravel (Aggregate and Additives), Lehigh Northeast Cement Company (Type III Cement), and Headwaters Resources, Inc. (Fly Ash)

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The Folio Staircase by Pordenone-based practice Disguincio & Co would comprise a repeated sequence of steps that slot into each other to make a spiral staircase.

Each step is flexible and relatively weak, but when pieced together the whole staircase would become stable and robust, says designer Mirk Daneluzzo.

The steps would be made from fibreglass reinforced with carbon fibre strips, although Daneluzzo hopes to utilise other materials in the future. "We are actually doing research to select environmentally sustainable solutions to have a natural fibre and bio-polymer-matrix composite," he told Dezeen.

For the moment there is no working prototype of the staircase, only a small model. "We are working to make it as soon as possible, in collaboration with some producers," added Daneluzzo.

We recently featured another concept for a spiral staircase using a single repeated element, this time based on a whale's backbone.

Other staircases we've published lately include flights of stairs floating in mid-air by artists Lang/Baumann and a ladder-like wireframe staircase leading to a mezzanine bedroom – see all staircases.

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Disguincio & Co appeared first on Dezeen.

Among the installations in Lang/Baumann's Beautiful Steps project is a curved white staircase that hangs in the hall of Trautenfels Castle in Austria, contrasting with the richly coloured frescoes on the ceiling.

They also installed an open walkway that loops around the outside of the castle and is accessed by steps under the windows.

An aluminium staircase connected by false doors was constructed on the exterior of a building in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. The building appears taller than it is because the grid of windows doesn't match the ceiling heights, so the artists made their work to a slightly smaller scale than a normal door and stair to accentuate the illusion.

Another staircase with lopsided steps was installed between the floor and ceiling of a Parisian art gallery, Galerie Loevenbruck, and can be adjusted to different heights by adding or subtracting steps.

They also suspended a wonky staircase inside the Fundación PROA museum in Buenos Aires and planted an arched staircase on a lawn in Lausanne.

Swiss-born Sabina Lang and San Franciscan Daniel Baumann have worked together since 1990 and are based in Burgdorf, Switzerland.

Other unusual steps we've featured include a concept for a staircase based on a whale's backbone and a suspended staircase that leads down to steps built into a kitchen counter – see all staircases.

See all installations »

Here's some more information from the artists:

Beautiful Steps #2 - 2009 Biel-Bienne CH, Utopics. 11th Swiaa Sculpture Exhibition

Technique: steel zincked, anodised aluminium
Dimensions: 177 x 523 x 458 cm
Curator: Simon Lamunière

The congress building in Biel-Bienne plays a trick on perception: because the diminutive grid of its large glass front does not match the ceiling height of the floors, the building appears taller than it is—more like a skyscraper than its actual 50 meters (164 foot) of height. The building also features an unusual concrete structure that encloses one half of the volume like an oversize frame, leaving a gap on one side between itself and the building. On this pillar, almost three-quarters of the way up, an aluminum stair was attached, leading from one fake door to another around one corner of the structure. In keeping with the optical illusion of the building, the work was built to a slightly smaller scale than a normal door and stair. The slender sculpture plays with an imaginary functionality.

Beautiful Steps #3 (Trautenfels) - 2010 Schloss Trautenfels A, Regionale. Fabricators of the World. Scenarios of Self-will

Technique: wood, paint
Dimensions: 11.5 x 5 x 4.3 m
Curator: Adam Budak, Peter Pakesch

A white, curved stair, slightly askew and suspended in midair in a baroque castle hall, was held aloft by a few slender, almost invisible cables. The lean shape and the white surface of the sculpture formed a striking contrast to the lush frescoes on the ceiling.

Beautiful Steps #5 - 2010 Schloss Trautenfels A, Regionale. Fabricators of the World. Scenarios of Self-will

Technique: laminated wood, paint
Dimensions: width of the step 70 cm, height 110 cm, diameter 8 m
Curator: Adam Budak, Peter Pakesch

Two curved stairs ascended to two windows at right angles. Outside each window a curved walkway projected into the air and disappeared in a loop around the facade of the building. Viewed from the outside, the walkway could be seen to connect the two windows like a fragile band around the castle's corner tower. Interior and exterior elements of the scultpture formed a complete circle.

Beautiful Steps #8 - 2011 Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris F

Technique: wood, lacquer
Dimensions: height 310 cm, diameter 250 cm
Courtesy: Galerie Loevenbruck Paris

A winding stair, slightly askew, was mounted between floor and ceiling of the gallery. Somewhat smaller in scale than an actual stair, the functional aspect of the sculpture was further diminished. This modular piece can be adjusted to different ceiling heights by adding or subtracting steps.

Beautiful Steps #9 - 2012 Vaudoise, Lausanne, CH
Technique: stainless steel, lacquer
Dimensions: 2.5 x 3.7 x 3.5 m

A fragment of an impossibly twisted circular stair rises from the ground and leads nowhere. While invisibly anchored in the ground, the sculpture inexplicably stands upright on its own. The first step is horizontal and parallel to the ground, but with each successive step the stair torques away from its original axis by 5 degrees until it projects into space at a steep angle. Adding to the drama, a continuous reduction in riser height emphasizes the foreshortening of the sculpture towards the top.

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by Lang/Baumann appeared first on Dezeen.