Forest Hill Staircase

Forest Hill Staircase — IADA 2024 award

Forest Hill Staircase received Platinum Winner recognition at the International Architecture & Design Awards 2024 in Entryway, Hallway & Staircase Design. Project status, design team and credits are listed alongside the presentation.

About the project

For this Georgian-style home, a design firm has crafted an interior of warmth and restraint. Designed for a textile designer, the interior is a welcome respite from the bold colors and patterns that fill their office. This residence offers a harmonious interior enveloped in neutral tones and natural finishes.

The design studio is attracted to residential projects that are tuned to balance, proportion, and stringent architectural geometries, as well as clients who are attuned to the rigors of custom design and willingness to take risks. On this occasion the designers took the risk to be as reductive as possible by eliminating all superfluous elements.

Clean, seemingly naked walls read more as stretched canvases designed to catch changes in light throughout the day or used to highlight a feature. This pared-back approach could be described as creating an “interior skin” for each room. When surface changes do occur, they are expressed in a new and subtle way and often eye catching.

The design team saw an opportunity to create a sculptural moment in the house by carving out the center staircase volume right up to the roof line, enabling the team to not only design a focal stair, but more importantly design a skylight that would serve as the main axis for the house. Extra white Thasos marble was the beginning of the conversation for this concept of skylight and stair becoming one. The volume is seamless in expression allowing the detail of the railing to become the true focal point of the space. Following the balustrade, one’s eye is drawn to the second-floor landing to a three-dimensional art piece by Dennis Lin.

Redefining the idea of a center staircase without a pendant was also very important. Instead, the lattice work of the skylight helps support the flowing nature of the railing design almost like an unraveled ribbon. Bathed in natural light, the space’s overall feeling is a pavilion like atmosphere.

The home’s environment and color palette throughout is warm and textural in nature but the center stair volume, glowing in light and white with its designed blackened steel railing creates a beacon in the house, a shining moment and point of memory for all visitors.

BURDIFILEK

BURDIFILEK is a leading interior design firm based in Toronto, Canada. Our firm is the creative strength behind many retail flagships, hospitality designs, luxury residential and real estate developments around the world. The BURDIFILEK design philosophy embraces sophistication and creative intelligence. Inspired by travel and exploration, art and artisans, the firm’s identity is demonstrated through the ability to realize expressive, sophisticated, meticulously curated interiors.