Public Structure Holland, Dutch Sculptural Stair Design, Architect, Carnisselande Art Project Photos
The Elastic Perspective
Sculptural Staircase Rotterdam, The Netherlands – design by NEXT architects, Amsterdam
17 May 2018, from our archive
Sculptural Staircase in Rotterdam
Location: Carnisselande, Barendrecht, NL
Design: NEXT architects
Carnisselande Stair for The Elastic Perspective
A rusty steel ring is gently draped upon a grass hill in Carnisselande, a Rotterdam suburb. It?s a giant circular stair leading the visitor up to a height that allows an unhindered view of the horizon and the nearby skyline of Rotterdam. The path makes a continuous movement and thereby draws on the context of the heavy infrastructural surrounding of ring road and tram track. While a tram stop represents the end or the start of a journey, the route of the stairway is endless.
However, the continuity and endlessness have a double meaning. Based on the principal of the Möbius strip, the continuous route of the stair is a delusion: upside becomes underside becomes upside. It has only one surface and only one boundary. The suggestion of a continuous route is therefore, in the end, an impossibility.

The Elastic Perspective is a local art plan for which NEXT architects designed this stair. The project reflects on the ambiguous relationship of the inhabitants of the Rotterdam suburb Carnisselande with their mother-town, which is expressed in both attraction and repulsion. ?The view on Rotter...