Go on and Let Your Staircase Make a Grand Entrance by Rose Bennett Gilbert on Creators.com

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Go on and Let Your Staircase Make a Grand Entrance

Q: We are adding a second story to our modern home and can't find good ideas for staircases in the right mood. Everything is traditional, with turned balusters and the like, or industrial, all exposed and bare. Any suggestions on where to look for something contemporary and beautiful?

A: I give you the totally cool — some would say awesome — staircase that architect Ann Fougeron designed for what has to be one of the most contemporary entrance halls in town. Icy white and black, it's like elegant calligraphy that sweeps a visitor's eyes instantly up the stairs.

And who's coming down? Author Michael Lassell just might envision Audrey Hepburn. In his new book, "Glamour — Making It Modern" (Filipacchi Publishing), he waxes rhapsodic about the star's dramatic entrance in the movie "Funny Face," flying down the staircase of the Louvre, trailing a swirl of chiffon.

In the same chapter of "Glamour," designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz agrees, "Staircases should always be grand." Meant for much more than mere transportation between upper and lower floors, staircases can make for grand entrances, and not just for visitors. Glamorous women have long loved gliding down them before the admiring eyes from below.

Old John D. Rockefeller, strict Baptist that he was, wasn't having such ostentation in Kykuit, the classical revival mansion he built in 1913, overlooking the Hudson River in upstate New York. As today's tour guides are amused to point out, Rockefeller insisted that the architects locate the staircase discreetly behind a wall.

Happily, this lyrical stair is allowed center stage in the entryway. Crafted of blackened hot-rolled steel with tapered treads and open risers, its stark and stunning silhouette is accented by the stair-stepping display of black-and-white art and the perfectly simple black sculpture on its white plinth below.

This is contemporary minimalism at its maximum best.

Q: But what if minimalism leaves you cold?

A: Then relax and feel free to immerse yourself in your "things," advises Warren Berger, author of "Glimmer" (The Penguin Press), an intriguing book that offers a whole new way of looking at design and the way we decorate our environments.

Berger is a journalist who became fascinated with the global ideas of Toronto designer Bruce Mau (Institute without Boundaries). By "Glimmer," he means that first flash of inspiration that can lead to innovations with profound impact on people's lives. The book's subtitle needs no translation: "How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World."

Among the thought-provoking "transformations," he offers a program designed to curb teen smoking and a bicycle designed to purify water as it's pedaled.

Closer to home, Berger believes that design can make you happy. So can the right things. "Most people are happy and comfortable when their home is filled with things associated with memories and experiences, as opposed to things that have merely been bought," Berger says. For example, Bruce Mau once decorated entirely in photographs.

"Home should be rich and complex, like life itself," he says. "Life is not simple, clean and streamlined." His own home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., not far outside Manhattan, is very personal, Berger reports. Every room is painted a different color; furnishings include acquisitions from travels with his wife, especially in the Caribbean.

It aptly reflects the author's attitude toward decorating. He says, "A home should tell rich stories about who you are and where you have been."

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Manhattan Style," "Hampton Style," and five other books on interior design. To find out more about Rose Bennett Gilbert and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.