Your Staircase Is Sabotaging Your Success 🪜

Last time I indulged in some exploration on the topic of air travel and airport design.

Those weren’t the only architectural thoughts I had on that day of my arrival in Paris.

During the flight and on my way to my apartment I was reading a book called How to be French by Janine Marsh – I know, the irony of me reading that when arriving in France isn’t lost on me. 😆

She writes about the importance the French place on all forms of art, and reminded me of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) theory of the classification of the major five arts.

His theory has been taken to heart in France for some reason, and the theory has been expanded beyond the five arts as newer forms of art have become legitimized.

Marsh lists the classification as follows:

1st art: Architecture

2nd art: Sculpture

3rd art: Visual arts (painting, drawing)

4th art: Music

5th art: Literature, poetry & other written forms of art

6th art: Performing arts (dance, theatre, mime, circus)

7th art: Cinema

8th art: Media arts (radio, television, photography)

9th art: Comics

10th art: Video games and digital art forms

This could incite all sorts of fascinating discussions on why this order would make sense and why it wouldn’t, but the thing that I had forgotten about this classification is that namely architecture is considered to be the first art.

In what kind of spaces we live is in fact a very primal matter.

Architecture’s first purpose is obviously to provide us with shelter from different weather conditions.

But beyond that, architectural design is about making that shelter look a certain way inside and out. It’s about marrying function and beauty together. Making living look nice and feel pleasurable.

Some design languages can also make ideological statements – to prove a point that feels relevant at the time of its realization. It can act as a form of activism to support a certain worldview. Take the example of Viollet-le-Duc advocating for rationalism or William Morris creating the Arts & Crafts movement.

Architecture is both vital and an extremely visible form of art that causes debates easily.

Just ask any Parisian and they will have an opinion on the curious façade of the Centre Pompidou.

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There I was, standing in front of the unassuming façade of my new apartment building.

I hadn’t yet seen any pictures of the entrance and the staircase that lead to my new apartment, so I was impatient to see what they would be like.

An entrance and a staircase (or even a garden for people who have their own house) are after all very important liminal spaces – much like airports are.

They are liminal spaces between arriving home and leaving from home.

They can either make or break the experience.

If the staircase is dark and filthy, you feel like a dark and filthy person.

If the staircase feels dignified, you feel dignified, and thus, you act like a dignified person.

Fortunately, my new entrance smells fresh and the staircase is dignified, and my new apartment proved to be perfect for my needs as well. 👏🏼

What do you like most about the entrance to your home?

Bisous,

Elle