CANTILEVER

A cantilever stair keeps only what is necessary. Treads extend from a single structural wall; there is no stringer beneath them, no post at the outer edge, nothing between one step and the next but air. What remains is the material itself — quarter-sawn walnut, hot-blackened steel — and the shadow each tread casts on the wall that carries it. We design, forge, and install cantilever stairs from our Toronto studio for houses across the GTA, keeping the commission list short enough that one team carries each project from drawing to install. Six to ten weeks after the first site visit, the finished stair is in place, looking as though it had grown out of the architecture rather than been added to it. Everything in between — the drawings, the 3D model, the forging — happens in-house.

The cantilever is the most demanding form we build, precisely because it shows the least. Most stairs distribute their loads visibly — stringers below, posts at the edge. Here the entire structure retires into one wall, and each tread must resist not just the weight placed upon it but the leverage that weight exerts at the anchorage. That resistance is engineered tread by tread, then concealed entirely, so the finished step reads as a solid plank of walnut and nothing more. We resolve the geometry in hand drawings first, then in a full 3D model, revised without charge until you approve it, and forge the steelwork in-house, where tolerances stay under our control. A stair with no visible structure leaves nowhere for imprecision to hide.

This collection pairs two materials and refuses a third. The treads are walnut, quarter-sawn from North American stock for dimensional stability — a discipline that matters more here than anywhere, since each tread performs alone. The grain is deep, the undertone chocolate; an oil finish brings up the subtle ray-fleck figure that catches side light, and the wood ages toward a warm amber patina. The metalwork is blackened steel: hot-blackened carbon steel with a sealed finish, matte, deep graphite in tone, carrying the faint surface variation of hand work. It is our standing choice for modernist schemes, and against walnut it reads as shadow against warmth. Both materials are solid throughout. We use no veneer, no laminate, no composite — on this stair or any other.

Walnut · Blackened Steel

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The owners who ask for a cantilever are usually opening a house up — a narrow Victorian in Toronto's older streets, a new build in Oakville or Vaughan with a double-height hall. With nothing beneath the treads, light passes straight through the stair and into the storey below; sightlines run uninterrupted across the floor, so a modest plan feels larger than its footprint. Solid treads on rigid anchors keep the walk quiet underfoot — none of the flex or creak of lighter construction. And because the stair reads as architecture rather than furniture, it holds its value at resale; it is the detail listing photographs are built around. Projects start at $10,000, and the studio's calendar holds only a few of them at a time.