I love stairs. LOVE them. I'm not keen on actually going up them, mind.
I touched on the gorgeous pair of spiral staircases at Seaton Delaval Hall in my last post. Several avenues/ideas have emerged from a very rewarding period of research, but the one I started to pick apart first was something based on the stairs.
If you're familiar with my work, you'll know that stairs and steps are a recurring theme, so I was naturally attracted to the amazing staircases in Seaton Delaval Hall. Aside from just being spectacular to look at, from every angle, I love the idea that in the Hall's current form, the stairs essentially lead to nowhere. Well, that's not quite right - the basement and ground floor are open to the public and accessible from the two staircases, but the first and second floors are not - so one can climb so far up and sort of peer up at the shrivelled and meted metal bannisters, still showing signs from the fire which engulfed the hall, some 200 years ago. There's something of a liminal quality in them, a sort of oddness structures or objects pick up when not used, or not used for their intended purpose.
I started sketching basic spiral stair shapes. Bizarrely, not something I've done before - or at least not since my formative years in architecture. I draw stairs all the time, often with turns that create spirals in a sense - but never with actual curves. Daunting.
It turned out that a spiral staircase doesn't necessarily need curves. I managed to build a basic structure in 3D using triangular slices, which, when stacked on one another, form the basic shape. Neat! I sketched dozens of different configurations and hit what felt like gold when I tried mirroring a basic 360-degree turned staircase and joining the two structures.
What resulted was a pleasingly symmetrical structure, which linked neatly to another theme in a lot of my work - infinity, or loops. The structure resembles the infinity symbol when viewed from above, but also if it was actually tread upon, would create an endless journey for the poor climber. Very reminiscent of 'Reality Tunnel' or 'Encircle'.
But, is it any good? I'm not sure.
I would love to build a full size version which could actually be walked on, but the budget wouldn't stretch that far unfortunately (plus it would be a health and safety nightmare). I'd like to perhaps explore building a sculpture, at a size that the budget would allow.
I think it would be beautiful, but it's a bit curvy. It it something which would be recognisable David Kenney? Unsure.
I really enjoyed drawing it though. One thing this project has afforded me, at the very least, is the opportunity to explore shapes and forms that I wouldn't normally go near.
Onto the next idea...