“Stair House" is conceived as two volumes stacked atop one another. Each is made accessible to the other by three types of stairs. A tapered straight run stair takes you from the street to the second level, a spiral stair takes you from the ground floor courtyard to the roof and a kickback stair takes you from the ground floor to the third floor. The volumes are enclosed, released, and partitioned by a series of transparent and opaque walls. With both volumes, the walls move from the interior to the exterior, where they hold and gather nature, making it available to the interior.
“Stair House” is in the Lower Heights neighborhood of Downtown Houston, Texas. It's situated to the south of the White Oak Bayou and to the north of the rail line to Chaney Junction. The site is bound by an industrial zone to the south and the Olivewood Cemetery to the East with two and three-story residential houses to the west. It is a resting place for freed slaves and is the first African American cemetery in the Houston city limits.
“Stair House” draws its inspiration from Spanish Colonial and Dog Trot House. Typologies that favor deep shade and organizational parti that create breezes.
Bio Bill Prices' career has spanned three decades, during which time he has practiced and produced work in eleven different countries. He has practiced professionally in Switzerland and the Netherlands, where he spent four years with OMA/Rem Koolhaas. There he acted as Research and Development Director and saw the Villa Bordeaux (Time Magazine called this house the most important private residence of the twentieth century") through to completion. Bill collaborated with Ai Weiwei in China, after which Ai Weiwei picked Bill's work to include in Phaidon's 10 x 10-3 Monograph.
