One project stands out from my six-month stint as a wood shop apprentice: a two-story spiral staircase that scaled the interior of an appended turret lined ceiling to floor with Colorado moss rock. Given that the house was 7,000 sq. ft and slope-side (actually, on the slopes) at Crested Butte’s most exclusive new development, it’s de rigueur that the owner spared no expense, neither on turret nor on stair assembly.

1m2 Spiral Staircase. Designed and manufactured by Eestairs.

Yours truly put in a fair string of nine-hour days just sanding the treads of French-Baked oak down to a glassy sheen. And let’s not even mention the labor expended on creating the single piece wooden laminate handrail. Well, leave it to the Dutch for the plebian antidote for such high-dollar extravagance: Eestairs, whose mission is “to be the number one Design Stair Specialist in the world,” has launched 1m2, a nifty bridge from bottom floor to top that takes the “spiral” out of “staircase.” Eestairs Touts the 1m2 as “an artistic solution for a functional problem,” which begs a pair of questions: “What’s the problem?” (Typical spiral stairs take up too much floor space and require too large a landing-floor aperture); and “What’s the solution?” (Tilt the supporting vertical pole). 1m2—and in case you hadn’t slapped your forehead yet, the name refers to the stairs’ teeny-tiny footprint—proposes a solution so simple it strains credulity: by setting the center post slightly askew, these Dutch wunderkinds have worked with rather than against the necessary vertical rise. The result is fewer treads, more space covered in less time, and a more genial locomotor pattern to boot: users only need travel the space of half a circle, so goodbye vertigo and dizziness.

The look of 1m2 is modern and sleek, with just a touch of Seussian whimsy. And I theorize that the latter is the explanation for the seemingly late arrival of this particular answer to this particular question. In other words, our societal penchant for the strictly vertical and horizontal precluded our ability to think outside the box, or along the diagonal axis, if you will. Thankfully, Eestairs has taken exception to this constraint. Their inspired, functional, and sustainable 1m2 is a testament to the benefits of letting the mind go in whatever direction it will.

Via Treehugger