This stair by Scottish architects, McInnes Gardner and Partners is very elegant. Each stair is supported only on one side, cantilevering out of the solid wall, which forms one ballustrade. The other is a single rectangular sheet of glass, floor to ceiling, creating a brilliantly minimalist stair that appears to float in air.

Ove Arup, the worlds most famous structural engineers, worked on the structure of this stair, designed by Dissing and Weitling architects. Only the handrail is metal, and the effect is stunning, far more delicate and beautiful than any of the Apple Store stairways.

Although the somewhat willful central steel ribbon ruins teh effect of this spiral glass stair, the stainless tension fixings and fritted glass treads are nicely done.

Dupont created this pure glass mockup, using their own tempered glass products, as a trade show exhibit at a Glass fair. The page linked to also details Apples Glass stair patent. Photo by Rene Tillmann

This glass spiral is a very simple design, regular shaped glass treads rotated around a central steel column. The effect look great in this particular shot, however it doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the building.

One of the problems of designing glass stairs in public buildings is that it difficult to avoid surface textures for both safety and perceived safety. These make the stairs translucent and not transparent and therefore ruin the illusion of a semi invisible stair. This simple domestic version, with fully transparent glass in metal trays, gets back to the original concept.

Rick Mather’s glass stair is nicely and unashamedly orthogonal. It contrasts beautifully with Ross Lovegrove’s elegant double curved carbon fiber DNA stair, on the right.

The horrid lacquer handrail does not do much for this design, however it illustrates nicely the effect of having very narrow solid walls to emphasize the ironic transparency and lightness of a glass stair.

A central glass stair was the focal point for the Nimes Mediatheque, designed in the 80s by Norman Foster.<p /><p />It was on a far larger scale than the versions, for Apple, such as that at the Soho New York store, and deliberately eschewed complex stainless steel fixings used by earlier Foster Glass staircases, which were associated with the high tech style which was starting to go out of fashion towards the late 80s.<p /><p />In other words, in terms of haute architectural design, the Apple store is a less ambitious copy of an 80s design, in a style that had already become unfashionable 20 years ago.<p /><p />

If you want to buy a glass staircase, off the shelf, Chinese portal, Alibaba has 2 versions which you can call for quotes. The one shown does not look too shabby.

A glass and steel sculpture for fearless lemmings.

The innovative piece of this spiral stair is not so much the glass treads, but the conical central support structure which is a held together with tension cables, rather than being a traditional solid pole, in compression.