The point of going to an office to work is to communicate with others. But for too many years we have been building our offices so that the only way to get around is by elevator. At some offices an alarm goes off if you try to use the stairs, and every separate office ends up being in a world of its own. That doesn’t encourage a whole lot of inter-office communication.

In Minneapolis, SmithGroup designed some jazzy offices for law firm Bowman and Brooke, and critical to the design was a jazzy stair. Penny Broda writes in GreenSource:

“Most of the airy feeling comes from the o…