Stairz

As promised, here is my tidbit about stairs. I've put them down in my memo-book as one of the requirements in my dream-loft; preferably spiral, but now that I've done the research and seen the wide variety of possibilities, I am stumped. Some are practical, some are beautiful and some are downright weird. FYI: stairs consist mainly of a tread (the part you step on) and a riser (the vertical part).

Check these babies out:

This graffiti trompe-l'oeil is dope - I'd love to see it in person; it must be oddly unrecognizable at a different angle.

I'm going to start with the Apple store stairs because I find them to be phenomenal - they're clearly perfectly engineered and are consistent with the overall Apple aesthetic - beautifully simplistic with a modern flare.

These stairs are confusing to me but I find the fact that they float very trippy - if two people went up at the same time, would they meet at the cross-section? The dynamics of this one make me a little bit dizzy.

I find these floating stairs absolutely amazing - although I wonder how much weight they can take - I'd need a serious installation guarantee before ordering these babies.

These are wicked - if only I were a skateboarder and didn't look like a total poser with these in my apartment.

I'm not sure how these wibble-wobble, crooked stairs work, but they must make a game of Mouse Trap oddly realistic.

Simple and modern... leading to a MEZZANINE! Also, the photographer's lighting doesn't hurt.

THE PRACTICAL, MULTI-USE SERIES:

I love the idea of a reading nook, but I think I prefer the idea of a reading staircase.

Wonderfully practical - although the open-organization might be too difficult for me to keep up.

The ability to hide clutter where no one will ever know it's literally right under their nose... or feet.

Another great multi-use set of stairs.

Wholly unnecessary? I think not - every pet needs help getting onto his or her private leather seating accommodations!

Requirements

I used to drive by this huge run down building that had enormous windows and overall amazing potential. I remember asking myself why I didn't have a billion dollars to buy, renovate and rent out (slash live in) it. Finally, however, someone slightly more financially adept stole my plan and has created quite the impressive location. It is now called The Banknote (check out thebanknotenyc.com for more), appropriately enough, as I am sure you will need more than a couple of those to rent in the building.

It's truly stunning, though, and I am putting it down as part of the requirements for where I want to live when I get an amazing loft. Other requirements include:

- a mezzanine (not the little baby ones, a giant one, where I could potentially put some sort of game room or a bedroom)

- a spiral staircase (preferably made of glass, like the ones at the Apple store (see future post about stairs) and very big because the small ones tend to make me dizzy)

- giant windows (I'm talking uber-big, as in obnoxiously large windows, I want them to take up the whole wall)

- a great view (perhaps something like this:)

After I went to the Banknote's website, I proceeded to check out other virtual Manhattan lofts and ended up on manhattanlofts.com, a website that made me feel very poor. One of the more impressive apartments, at only $2 990 000, looks like this:

No big deal.