Modern Stairs in a Listed Building, Edinburgh

This house is a 200 year old, category B-listed Georgian Villa in Newington, on the south side of Edinburgh. The property underwent a comprehensive renovation and internal redesign in 2025, as part of this, I designed new modern stairs. This is a new stair in a new location within the house. 

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The design is unapologetically modern. Rather than fake a Georgian stair that never survived, it is honest about its newness while deferring to the historic fabric around it. A single continuous timber assembly carries the visitor between floors: stone bottom steps, open oak treads, vertical softwood batten screens, and a profiled mahogany handrail. Open risers let the half-landing daylight fall straight through the flight; a continuous down-stand bead closes each gap to 95mm to meet the Scottish Technical Standard without thickening the floating tread. At the half-landing the handrail slots over a frameless 17.5mm glass balustrade.

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Three species each do specific work: European oak for a hard-wearing tread, mahogany for warmth at the point of touch, and Lunawood Trio for vertical rhythm and stability over the two-storey height. Behind the cladding the stair is framed in softwood CLS — studwork enclosures and CLS stringers — with a concealed galvanised steel spine, so it reads as one coherent timber object, almost furniture, rather than a conventional flight. The same CLS enclosures double as a service riser, concealing heating, water, drainage and electrical containment serving the refurbished floors above and below.

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The flight was set out traditionally: before any tread was cut, the joiners marked the full geometry directly onto the CLS stringers, each step numbered by hand. Built by Edinburgh team Unique Project, the stair won Listed Building Consent after an on-site case to the council and Historic Environment Scotland — the lost original could not be reinstated, and an honest modern intervention respected the building's evolution better than pastiche. Old looks old; new looks new.

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To get the full story, check out this blog post