The Stair House
With Stair House, de Jong leaves the building’s worn steps and curved banister intact, their patina a record of past passages. He cuts circular openings through nearby walls, puncturing sight-lines and folding light across the vertical axis. Moving through the house is a sculptural act, ascent and descent shift perspectives of openness and enclosure.
The second work in Triptych of Time, Stair House begins, again, with a single architectural act. The central staircase—the spine of movement—becomes both subject and structure.
Suspended laterally within the space is a second stair—salvaged, rotated ninety degrees, and mounted like an Escher illusion. What once guided movement upward now lies still, its mass and geometry turned sideways. The stair, once functional, becomes a memory paused mid-transition, suspended between what was and what could be.
Visitors who stay at the Stair House experience this choreography first-hand. Each step upward, each glance downward, adds another tread to an ever-expanding passageway. In this way, inhabitants engage in a conversation about balance, disorientation, and the way we carry our own histories forward—sometimes upright, sometimes sideways, but always present.
