Twin concrete stairs rising either side of a sunken entry, flanked by long sweeping pale walls beneath a glazed facade

Modern materials · Ultra-high-performance concrete

Innovative precast building components.

Royal Centre1055 West Georgia, Vancouver
Perkins&WillUVic & Vancouver stairs
University of VictoriaStudent housing & dining
Telus Ocean767 Douglas Street, Victoria
Simon Fraser UniversityDuctal public art
MeccanicaVancouver public art
Hotel RialtoHeritage restoration

Feature stairs

A feature stair is the one element in a building everybody touches and nobody forgets — and in ordinary concrete it’s the element that fights you hardest. Sections come out thick, spans come out short, and the geometry gets value-engineered down to what the formwork can manage.

Ultra-high-performance concrete takes that constraint away. Every tread is cast in a mold in our shop, so the shape is whatever was drawn — and it arrives finished.

Ductal® sublicense holder since 2006 — the ultra-high-performance concrete we cast in, thin, strong and finished off the mold.

The same material and the same shop also do design assist for new products, and heritage restoration on hundred-year-old facades.

Rendering of the Telus Ocean City Room lobby — the three-flight feature stair rising along a panelled stone wall, a two-storey ocean video wall and amphitheatre seating below — The Telus Ocean City Room — the three-flight stair we’re casting now, Level 1 to Level 2. In production at our shop. TELUS rendering · 767 Douglas Street, Victoria

The Perkins&Will stair from above — each dark UHPC tread cantilevering clear of the stringer as a thin plane, a living wall alongside — Treads cantilevered clear of the stringer · Perkins&Will, Vancouver, 2012

The same flight seen from high above, curving through the atrium past a living wall behind a glass balustrade — … and the whole flight, curving through the atrium

Any geometry

Helical, switchback, folded, cantilevered clear of its support. A mold can hold a curve that formwork can’t — so the stair follows the drawing rather than the pour.

Thin treads, long spans

UHPC carries structural load at a fraction of the section ordinary concrete needs. Treads read as planes, not blocks, and the flight can cross open space instead of leaning on it.

Colour and texture, cast in

Integral colour, and any surface the mold is lined with — ribbed, honed, board-formed, tactile strips included. Nothing applied afterwards, nothing to wear off.

University of Victoria — student housing & dining

The UVic dining hall with a precast UHPC feature stair crossing the room, students moving through beneath a mass-timber ceiling — See the case study
ArchitectPerkins&Will LocationVictoria, BC MaterialDuctal® UHPC, precast ScopeThree feature stairs

From a stair to a way of building

Stairs

Walls

Floors

A home solution

Grow the stair business, then reinvest — stairs to walls to floors — toward a kit of parts you could build a whole home from, in a material that lasts for generations. Read the story →