There is hardly an invention in human cultural history that is more banal yet more metaphysical than the staircase. The ascent, the descent, the movement between levels, the overcoming of gravity through the mere geometry of steps — all this is as old as the human need to assert itself in the vertical. In the office of TCA, hidden within a historic building in the winding old town of Galata, Istanbul, this story comes alive in a new form: as “Relationship.”
One might be tempted to read the word “Relationship” too sentimentally. Yet what is a staircase if not a relationship? A relationship between above and below, between the first step and the last, between the body that walks it and the space it cuts through. In this case, the staircase is more than just a functional construction. It is a palimpsest: a place where the past, present, and future are interwoven.
The architects accepted the narrow space like a stubborn text that must be interpreted. Instead of forcing it open, they folded it, entwined it, coiled it into a sculptural gesture. And as Umberto Eco liked to emphasize: every sign refers to other signs. In this way, each wooden slat refers to another, each connection to a before and after, each structural element to the countless hands and techniques that brought it into being.
What is particularly remarkable is the material: the remnants of old wooden floors — in a sense, the archive of the building — were not discarded but brought back into circulation. In an age when the word “recycling” is mostly reduced to a moral obligation, here the discarded becomes a new web of meaning. The traditional techniques of woodworking — without nails, without screws, joined solely through precise interlocking — recall the craftsmanship of medieval carpenters, who entrusted the stability of their works to geometry rather than metal.
Thus, from these fragments grows a structure that is more than merely statically functional: it becomes a walkable narrative. The staircase bears what it tells. It bears the memory of the felled tree, the plank in the floor, the first step of a resident centuries ago. And it bears the body that walks it today — each time forming a new, individual relationship with this wooden weave.
Perhaps, as Eco might say, the true task of a staircase is not merely to connect two heights, but to remind us that every height is a relation — never an absolute. A space only comes alive through what lies between.
And so, “Relationship” rises from the darkness of the ground floor to the brightness of the upper level like a band linking the familiar and the past with the step into the new. A walk upon these steps is more than mere movement: it is a quiet dialogue with the material, the space, and time — and, in the end, perhaps, with ourselves.
