The Stairway Within: Iconic Staircases That Inspire Habitat Architects’ Designs

• Monika Choudhary | Founder & Chief Development Officer, Habitat Architects

In architecture, a staircase is never just a path between floors—it is a sculpture you can walk on, a frame for light, and a silent stage for daily life. Long before lifts reshaped how we move, stairs guided our pace, gave rhythm to our journeys, and defined the way we experienced a building.

For me, stairways are deeply personal. They make you slow down, notice how the light shifts, and see the world from a slightly altered height. They aren’t simply about getting somewhere; they’re about how the journey feels beneath your feet. Over the years, I’ve sought out remarkable staircases across the world—not just as an architect searching for design references, but as someone who collects stories in stone, wood, and steel.

One of the first to truly stay with me was the double-helix staircase at the Vatican Museums in Rome. Designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932, it’s an engineering poem—two spirals entwined so that people can ascend and descend without ever crossing paths. It’s a reminder that the most elegant solutions can also solve the most practical challenges.

In Greenwich, the Tulip Stairs at the Queen’s House offered another kind of lesson. Britain’s first self-supporting spiral staircase wears its structure lightly, with a lace-like wrought-iron balustrade that seems to hover in air. Standing there taught me that true elegance often lies in restraint.

The Guggenheim Museum’s spiral ramp in New York, by Frank Lloyd Wright, redefined how I thought about movement. The ramp merges stair and gallery into one continuous flow, making each step part of an unfolding art experience. It’s proof that architecture can choreograph not just where we walk, but what we feel as we move.

Then there’s the Loretto Chapel staircase in Santa Fe—a work of craftsmanship that borders on the miraculous. Built without nails or visible support, it ascends in two full turns that seem to defy logic. Here, design, skill, and mystery meet in perfect harmony.

And high in China’s Hunan Province, the Stairway to Heaven at Tianmen Mountain offers the opposite of subtle—999 stone steps leading through a natural rock arch. Climbing it is as much a spiritual act as a physical one, a reminder that staircases can embody endurance and belief as much as beauty.

These encounters never translate directly into my designs, but they leave echoes—traces that resurface in new forms.

In Garden Estate, the staircase became the emotional heart of the home. Rising from the formal living space with a graceful sweep, it draws the eye upward to a chandelier made from inverted crystal-cut beakers. Through the day, light filters through the glass to trace intricate patterns on the stone below. Metallic railings handcrafted in Moradabad, anchor the piece in India’s craft traditions, while its proportions speak to a global design language.

At Bella Vista, the clubhouse stairway was conceived as the embodiment of movement itself. Curving upward as if poured in a single fluid motion, it invites you to linger rather than rush. The steps are warm to the touch, the balustrade sculptural, the light constantly shifting across its surfaces. It is not merely a route between levels—it is a place to pause, to converse, and to see the building from a new perspective.

A great staircase is more than a connector—it is an experience. It can be ceremonial, like the Spanish Steps in Rome, or quietly domestic, winding through the intimacy of a courtyard home. Regardless of scale, stairs share a universal familiarity: we all know what it feels like to take them, yet each one leaves its own distinct mark. When we design at Habitat Architects, the staircase is often one of the first elements we imagine. It is where proportion, structure, light, and human movement converge—what I call an emotional blueprint. It sets the tone for the rest of the building, determining whether an ascent will feel grand or intimate, whether it will frame a view, draw in daylight, or reveal a detail only visible from a certain angle.

The staircases that inspire me most—whether centuries old or strikingly modern—share a quality of permanence. They feel as relevant today as the day they were built because they were conceived with clarity and integrity. That is the benchmark we hold ourselves to at Habitat. Our stairways are not created for trends—they are built to be lived with, leaned on, and remembered. They welcome the patina of time, growing richer with every footstep, yet they still feel new to the person climbing them for the first time.

The next time you encounter a staircase, take a moment. Notice how the light plays on each tread, how the railing rests in your hand, how the space changes as you rise. Look back at where you began, and forward to where you are going. In that simple act, you’ve stepped into the kind of architecture we strive to create—spaces that shape not just your path, but your experience of moving through the world. For us at Habitat Architects, every ascent is a story worth telling, and the stairway is where that story begins.