Emporio Armani, London – Projects

This project involved an elegant steel staircase spanning 4.5m from ground to first floor as the central visual feature of the store. The staircase was designed under a time-limited shop-fit contract in response to an initial brief from Armani that it should have no visible means of support. 

The store is triangular in plan with two walls constructed predominantly from glass. The staircase was developed to fit into the pointed junction of these two transparent walls. Elliott Wood produced a series of column-free design solutions for the staircase and undertook detailed computer analysis to minimise supports. 

The final design solution used two slender steel hangers to suspend the steel staircase from the soffit above. Further analysis enabled additional refinements to the overall design and enabled the engineers to minimise the number and size of components used to fabricate the staircase. Elliott Wood also detailed the junction of the staircase with the floor to reflect that of the store’s furniture.