I've always thought that fire escapes are an interesting form of design. Although these staircases work as a part of the building design, they are often works of art themselves. This ability to take a building safety requirement and turn it into its own work of art is design at its best.
Fire escapes are often used on older-residential building such as apartments. In a well maintained structure, the fire escape can contribute to the overall feeling of the building. It can add character or help create a certain ambiance.
The fire escape often creates a feeling of uniqueness and creativity to the mood of the building.
The stairs on the left are a good example of utility as art. These stairs create an extremely tactile, rough and organic mood through the use of curves, the roughness of the metal used in its construction, and the way each individual stair's joint is attached to the central pole.
The stairs above create an entirely different feeling than the winding stairs. The yellow stairs appear to be more of a work of modern art. This feeling is achieved through its use of colour and its use of angles. There are no curves in this design which emphasizes the buildings, very contemporary look. In essence, the yellow fire escape ads a feeling of art or design to what would be a very blah kind of building.
1 comment:
Good eye. I never would have thought of fire escapes. BUT, they are well planned, and used so rarely that we don't ever think about them until we need them.
I have seen many different type of fire escapes, and some are old and worn, some are beautiful, and obviously never used.
Spellbinding, the way that the interaction of the angles dissect each other and create something so ornate.
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