Steel Staircase

A folded steel staircase runs alongside an exposed brick wall to connect the two levels of this east London flat by architecture studio Bell Phillips. Located in Hackney, the home is one of several created through the conversion of a Victorian school building characterised by walls of yellow-hued London stock brick. South London-based Bell Phillips – whose recent projects include a park inside a converted Victorian gas holder – demolished a former staircase that once ran parallel with the apartment’s mezzanine level. The team replaced it with a new stair constructed from a six-millimetre-thick sheet of steel that was folded and welded before being finished with a coating of atomised brass.