If you’ve visited a new building on a college campus recently, or a new museum or library, you’ve probably encountered so-called “bleacher stairs” — wide staircases that double as amphitheater-like seating. For the last decade or so, bleacher stairs have become a ubiquitous landmark in modern public architecture. It’s time to stop this trend.
The trend dates back to December 2001, when Italian fashion house Prada opened a branch in New York. The store was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and featured a zebrawood staircase that Koolhaas called “The Wave,” which could be used for seating and exhibitions. The New York TimesCritic Herbert Maskamp praised the design, writing that it was “a miraculous harmony between time and space,” and its subsequent popularity has become a prime example of how avant-garde design, or at least its consumer version, can penetrate the mainstream.
The publicity generated by a star architect and his glamorous clients inevitably led to other Architects have tried their best to recreate the magic of that project, and before long, grandstand staircases were popping up all over the country, a trend that accelerated over time until the proverbial snowball rolled downhill.
The first bleacher stairs I saw in the Dallas area were in the Arts and Technology Building at the University of Texas at Dallas, completed in 2013. That same year, architecture firm HKS made the bleacher stairs a focal point for the downtown offices. More recently, Spanish architecture firm Nieto Sobejano’s winning proposal for the Dallas Museum of Art expansion includes two bleacher stairs.
The popularity of these staircases is understandable: They are dramatic in appearance, signal an interest in fostering a sense of community (an essential goal for public institutions in the post-pandemic era), and serve two functions at once: they transform circulatory spaces into places of public assembly. For architects, they can easily lend themselves to a sense of monumental grandeur: At the American Museum of Natural History’s recently opened Gilder Center in New York, visitors are greeted upon entering the Gene Gang-designed building not by dinosaur skeletons or other natural wonders, but by a staircase of bleachers.
The problem is that the benefits of bleacher stairs are more theoretical than practical. Functionally, bleacher stairs are inconvenient at best. They make less than ideal seat backs and are very uncomfortable if they don’t have cushions (as is often the case in my experience). Multi-person conversations are difficult because everyone is facing the same direction and often on different levels. Not surprisingly, they tend to get used very little.
“Sit-step staircases are an all-in-one seating option, but ultimately they’re not ideal for anything,” says Colin Coupe, a design partner in the New York office of architecture firm SOM, which frequently works with educational institutions. “For large audiences, backless bleachers can quickly become uncomfortable and lead to a search for suitable seats, whereas on a day-to-day basis, people would much prefer to sit at a reading table, chaise lounge, or lounge seat.”
Aside from the lack of comfort, grandstand stairs have a variety of problems: they are an inefficient use of space and materials, they take up large areas that could be used more constructively for assembly spaces or other functions, and perhaps most problematic, they are inaccessible and uncomfortable for people with mobility issues, effectively isolating them from the general public.
“To me, this suggests that certain physical abilities, like climbing stairs, are a prerequisite for participating in public life and collective activities,” says the book’s author, architect David Giessen. Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access.
“For a building to be truly accessible, it should not erect unnecessary barriers,” architecture critic Alex Bozikovic wrote in a 2022 column on accessibility and design. The Globe and Mail “People with disabilities should be able to experience buildings the same way as everyone else” in Toronto.
Not accommodating people with disabilities is a moral blunder, and potentially illegal. The issue was recently highlighted by New York City officials suing architect Steven Holl for failing to meet the disability standards of the Queens Public Library’s Hunters Point branch, whose bookshelves are only accessible by stairs. Even worse is Thomas Heatherwick’s tourist attraction, The Vessel, in New York’s Hudson Yards, with its 150-foot-tall staircases that make it nearly inaccessible to anyone with mobility issues. (It will soon reopen after being closed for three years following a string of suicides.)
There are alternatives, and Koop’s recently opened Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT is a good example that offers a compromise between bleacher stairs and a traditional staircase. To achieve this, Koop placed a lounge area with built-in seating between the parallel sections of a double staircase, satisfying the demands of a ceremonial entrance while also providing a comfortable, accessible gathering space.
“As soon as you walk in, there’s a three-sided conversation pit designed for small groups to gather, with oak steps on either side,” says Koop. “The top of it looks like it’s just steps to sit on, but even above that there are a variety of benches where students can congregate or sit alone.”
Gissen, meanwhile, is open to exploring more outlandish options, perhaps borne out of 1960s counterculture. “I think a giant mattress would be a better way to bring people together,” he says. “A lot of people with disabilities are calling for cities to rethink rest as a public good, and I think it’s important to explore that possibility.”
A giant public mattress might be a hard sell (I’d love to see someone try it), but that option, combined with Koop’s more traditional approach at MIT, leaves plenty of room for experimentation.
More broadly, architects need to be more inventive in planning new public spaces, and their patrons need to demand that these spaces are accessible to all residents.
