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ABOVE & LEFT: Due to a lack of headroom, we designed a self-supporting, stringer-less white oak stair to link
the atrium below to the terrace above. The consequence of seeing the treads and risers f rom below creates an
Escher-like upside-down stair, together with a lack of visible structure, the stairs "float" between floors.
FACING PAGE: This South End townhouse, quite narrow at 15 feet, was in a woeful state of disrepair. Years of a
leaky roof had degraded any original finishes past the state of saving and had caused the rear masonry wall to
detach f rom the rest of the building and lean dangerously toward the park. The building's primary virtue was
its proximity to a beautiful private urban park.
Photographs by Millicent Harvey
See more about BUTZ + KLUG architecture on page 457
