Glass Stair, Apple SoHo Store, Rebuild

2002 marked the opening of the first Apple flagship store—SoHo—which featured a spectacular glass stair. The grand entrance to the retail space, this stair was truly structural glass; all primary loads carried by glass, stitched together with intricate fittings of titanium and stainless steel.

Since that time, the Apple design team and Seele Sedak have pushed beyond the limits of glass fabrication and hardware design on each and every project. By 2012, it was possible to make single laminated glass panels to span the full length of a stair, and to embed hardware for tread support and handrail attachment directly into the panels. When Apple undertook the complete remodeling of SoHo in 2012, these improvements allowed for even more discreet fittings, creating an elegant weightlessness even for such a massive stair.

TriPyramid worked with Apple and the engineering design team to develop geometry for the high-strength stainless steel inserts, the intricate hardware used to connect the glass treads to the stringer panels and the complex fittings which attach the balustrade panels to the building structure. TriPyramid then manufactured all the hardware and the stainless steel handrail.

TriPyramid also supplied the stainless steel rafter weldments, the center struts and the bent rod assemblies which support the large skylight, constructed in 2002, which floods the stair and retail space with sunlight.