This disassemblable spiral staircase by French industrial designer Roger Tallon is, not surprisingly, in the design collection of the MOMA. It’s both industrially ingenious and ridiculously beautiful. Tallon is one of those wildly prolific versatile designers responsible for a diverse variety of projects. Among many other things these include the Wimpy chair, cutlery, TVs, sinks, France’s streamlined TVG high speed train, and more recently he was the design director for the Eurostar trains. Yet oddly he’s not all that well-known outside France – for example there’s no Wikipedia entry for him in English, which is strange considering his work. How does that happen? This 1964 staircase, officially called the model M400 adjustable helicoid spiral staircase, has a central steel column on which ten cast aluminum steps, one wide landing stair and spacers, are strung. The M400 is still being made, and if you are sitting on a lot of disposable income you can have one. The top image of the staircase is a recent photo by an auction house, and shows an after-the-fact hand rail. The staircase comes with no rail so there were many interesting custom made solutions to the rail problem, not usually as nice as this one. I recently found photos of the staircase as installed in a modernized 60s room in an old Paris house, below, in the 1973 decor book 1601 Decorating Ideas for Modern Living. Closeup photo via stairporn (others here, and see other stairs from stairporn here).

This is the Mi Casa VolB showroom in São Paolo, by Marcio Kogan. I love cast concrete, especially here where there’s no attempt to embellish or hide the structure. Via Wallpaper: “The concrete is visible throughout, free of detailing, with even the construction workers’ chalk markings left intact inside. Outside, one facade is an exposed steel frame, normally used to reinforce concrete. Rough-textured surfaces lit from above and via the low shop window, make the space, as Kogan says, ‘almost an X-ray of the materials’. This may be an elite, upmarket boutique, but the design of the building would not be expensive to emulate considering the simplicity of its shapes and materials. It would be so nice to see something like this in Vancouver.

This almost surreal Polished Steel Coffee Table by Italian architect and designer Gabriella Crespi looks like a metal crystal formation of some kind. Ca. 1970s. Very beautiful, and also multifunctional. The staggered leaves are retractable, as you can see, and it’s covered with a mirror-finish steel. It’s unfortunate that Crespi’s work never went into mass production – she did a lot of custom work – and that she eventually pulled away from design altogether. Read her bio by clicking below, via Todd Merrell Antiques. If I could have anything on his website, and I like most of it, it would probably be this.

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