The UVic dining hall at midday, the switchback UHPC feature stair crossing above tables of students

Feature stairs

The stair is the room’s one chance to be architecture.

Szolyd precasts feature stairs in ultra-high-performance concrete — thin treads, long spans and precise edges that ordinary concrete can’t hold.

Start a stair project

University of Victoria Student housing & dining Perkins&Will

Selected stairs

Feature stairs, across three projects

Looking down the Perkins&Will stair from the landing above, treads stepping away in dark UHPC — Perkins&Will · Vancouver, 2012Looking down the flight from the landing above

Full side elevation of the feature stair beneath the mass-timber ceiling — University of VictoriaThe switchback in side elevation, under the mass timber

Rendering of the Telus Ocean City Room lobby — a thin cantilevered feature stair rising along the panelled stone wall, amphitheatre seating below — Telus Ocean · Victoria, in productionThe City Room stair — TELUS rendering

We cast in Ductal®, the ultra-high-performance concrete developed by Lafarge — Szolyd has held a North American Ductal sublicense since 2006.

Case study

University of Victoria — student housing & dining

Three feature stairs anchor the University of Victoria’s student housing and dining project, across its two buildings. In the dining hall, a switchback feature stair crosses the room in the open — part circulation, part meeting place, carrying hundreds of students a day under a mass-timber ceiling. In the residence, the stairs do the opposite work: charcoal ribbed treads in a white well, quiet and exact.

All three were precast by Szolyd in Ductal UHPC and installed finished. The project was designed by Perkins&Will; its honours include a Citation at the 2024 AIA Canada Design Awards and a 2024 VRCA Silver Award of Excellence.

Project: Student housing & dining feature stairs
Location: Victoria, British Columbia
Architect: Perkins&Will
Material: Ductal® UHPC, precast
Scope: Three feature stairs across two buildings
Photographed: September 2022

Looking down the switchback from the upper landing, the dark treads folding back on themselves — The switchback, from the landing

Diagonal composition of UHPC treads and steel handrail — Tread and rail

View from the top landing over the dining hall, timber ceiling and glass beyond — From the top landing

The student housing and dining building from outside, its glazed and screened facade along the campus edge — The housing-and-dining project, from the campus edge

Engineering drawing: elevation of a typical Ductal stair tread, 25 mm thin on 75 mm bearings, and a 1:1 section of the stainless steel strip inlays epoxied into the tread surface — The residence stairs (A2 & A3), as engineered — 25 mm Ductal® treads, stainless strip inlays set 3 mm proud. This is what the ribbed treads in the photographs are. Drawing: Herold Engineering for Szolyd · IFC, July 2022

Opened July 2026

Harry Jerome — the stairs beside the slide

At North Vancouver’s new Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre, the atrium’s famous move is a two-storey slide — and beside it, the feature stairs that carry everyone back up to go again. Szolyd cast those stairs, awarded in 2025 and delivered for the centre’s July 2026 opening.

The building is HCMA’s design — a timber-and-steel entry hall under a wood-coffered ceiling meant to read like the North Shore forests — and the stair sits in the middle of its most public room.

Project: Harry Jerome Community Recreation Centre
Location: Lonsdale Avenue at East 23rd, North Vancouver BC
Architect: HCMA
Customer: Smith Bros. & Wilson, general contractor
Timeline: Awarded 2025 · opened July 25, 2026
Design honours: World Architecture Festival 2019 — Civic, Future Projects (building design)

Architectural 3D view of Harry Jerome's Stair 01 from the southwest — switchback flights wrapping the atrium with the slide beside them — Stair 01, HCMA’s 3D view from the southwest — the flights our treads ride on. Drawing: HCMA, sheet A600

Section drawing of the stainless steel tube slide descending from Level 2 to Level 1 beside the stair — And the slide, in section — the ride down beside the walk up. Drawing: HCMA, sheet A600

In production

Telus Ocean — 33 steps, downtown Victoria

Rendering of the completed Telus Ocean building at dusk — the glass flatiron prow rising above the Douglas Street corner, lit from within — The building at completion. TELUS rendering, made public by CHEK News

Szolyd is casting a 33-step feature stair for Telus Ocean, the flatiron office building going up at 767 Douglas Street on the edge of Victoria’s Inner Harbour — a thin, precise flight rising through the building’s City Room lobby.

Our treads go in through 2026. The building itself is due to complete in the first quarter of 2027.

telusocean.com Design & concept Aryze project page

Project: Telus Ocean — feature stair
Address: 767 Douglas Street, Victoria BC
Szolyd scope: 33-step feature stair
Architect: Diamond Schmitt Architects
Development: Aryze Developments · EllisDon construction
Building: 10 office storeys · 158,441 sq ft
Stair: Casting and installing through 2026
Building completion: Q1 2027

2012

Where the stair work started

In March 2012, Szolyd cast the stair tread and riser package for Perkins&Will’s Vancouver office — the first feature stair out of the shop, and the one that proved the case.

The brief was a stair that read as a set of floating planes in a room with a living wall along one side. In ordinary concrete that means a thick section and a heavy stringer; in Ductal it meant treads slim enough to cantilever clear of their support, cast to a curve, and delivered finished.

It worked, and it set the pattern the shop has followed ever since — cast in the mold, arrive finished, install in days. Every stair we have cast since descends from it.

Project: Perkins&Will Vancouver office stair
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Cast: March 2012
Scope: Stair tread & riser package
Material: Black Ductal® UHPC, precast
Note: The shop’s first feature stair

The flight part-installed — L-shaped UHPC tread-and-riser units set on temporary props, guard posts and site clutter around them — Mid-install — each tread and riser arriving as one folded piece

Close view of a black Ductal tread edge, the nosing crisp and the surface uninterrupted — The edge, in black Ductal®

Process

From first sketch to installed flight

Design assist

Bring the stair to us early. We work with your drawings while the geometry is still negotiable — that’s where the material earns its keep.

Engineering

Section, span, connections and tolerances are resolved before anything is cast.

Precast

Cast in our Shawnigan Lake shop on Vancouver Island — controlled conditions, finished surfaces off the mold.

Install

Delivered finished and set in place. No forming, no curing, no topping on site.

Start

Working on a stair? Talk to us before the design closes.

The best feature stairs are decided early — when the span, the section and the budget can still meet the idea.

Start a stair project

Or write to us directly: trevorh@szolyd.com