What gets us safely up or down a staircase is a matter of law and engineering, the architectural uses of the staircase are a different issue altogether and the one cannot be replaced by the other—both are necessary. ^[1]

How to design a stair. Even though I have taught architecture students for over three decades, I still enjoy presenting them with this task. Not simply because the project brief calls for a building with several stories, but because stairs are never easy to design, especially for students, who need to first understand basic principles in order to make a stair comfortable AND to code. Designing prerequisite fundamentals (the stair) seems a natural way to engage students in a creative endeavor that is deeply anchored in pragmatism.