Hong Kong has a love-hate relationship with stairs. We love the fact that our Mid-Levels escalator is the longest 'electric staircase' in the world, yet we curse them any time a lift is out of service.
We're supposed to use stairs for the exercise, but often we try to avoid them. Owing to the design of many of our homes, however, they're there whether we like them or not. And just because we need stairs to link the different levels of our abodes doesn't mean they need to be boring. Staircase design is one area in which function and form can come together in a dramatic way.
Traditionally, when a staircase was intended to make a statement, size mattered. Think Gone with the Wind, or even Titanic, and grandiose staircase scenes spring to mind. Those wide, sweeping staircases - sometimes known as bridal staircases - are lovely, but they are better admired than copied. Few homes nowadays could spare the space they require.
Staircase designers from Scarlett O'Hara's era might have had the talent, but they lacked the technology available today. Just about anything is possible now, no matter how difficult or tight the space.
Geoffrey Packer, a design draughtsman with British firm EeStairs, says that many clients for whom space is an issue come to him assuming that a spiral staircase is their best option.
'They believe it takes up less room, but that's not true,' he says. Spiral stairs take up a circular space, most of the time through a square opening, Packer says. Helical stairs, which are curved with no central column, also may seem space-efficient, but they actually take up lots of room, he says.