Requiem for the staircase

Thirteen basic models of staircase take the history of an architectural element to produce a thought-provoking review, not without touches of humour, of some of the basic landmarks in the history of art.

Straight-flight stairs, the quarter-turn and half-turn stairs, the imperial staircase, sambaing stairs, the winding stair, stairs in the air, impossible stairs... Thirteen basic models of staircase take the history of an architectural element to produce a thought-provoking review, not without touches of humour, of some of the basic landmarks in the history of art. Staircases are presented in the form of models, plans, photographs, paintings, projections and life-size reproductions: stairs that the visitor can go up and down to gain a physical understanding of the very curious formal differences which so often go unnoticed. But these are staircases which are threatened with extinction as they no longer respond to the functional parameters imposed by architectural modernity. This exhibition is, then, a requiem and a deeply-felt homage to this multiform space, not just on the part of architecture but of the arts as a whole.