Matyas Architects & Interiors — a three-level timber staircase with curved oak cladding over a steel balustrade, set within 150m² of continuous European oak
Albert Park is a Matyas Architects & Interiors home built around one idea: a timber staircase running the full vertical spine of the house, from basement to first floor, clad in continuous European oak. Treads, risers, stringer, newel, balustrade. One material moving three storeys, nothing interrupting it. The client kept art throughout the home minimal. They didn’t need more. At Albert Park, the staircase is the art piece.
The central detail is the balustrade. Matyas wanted the full stair wrapped in timber with no visible steel or glass showing: a continuous oak skin over the structural frame, curving with it around the newel and along the return at every landing. Market Timbers supplied the 20mm engineered hand-scraped oak to match the floor. To make that same material follow the vertical curves of the balustrade, we machined each piece down to a 2mm veneer: the only way to coax a hardwood this thick through a radius that tight without cracking. Each curved section was set out against a template, formed over the concealed steel frame, glued, and fitted piece by piece. A solid oak handrail follows the line of the cladded balustrade across all three levels, finishing the run.
The stair is detailed in signature Matyas style: mm-precision throughout, with 3mm shadow gaps between every tread and riser, and between every cladding panel. Those shadow lines are what give the stair its sculptural, floating depth. A sense that every timber surface sits just proud of its neighbour, catching light rather than butting into it. At that tolerance there’s no room for error. A 1mm deviation reads as a mistake across the whole flight.
The ground-floor flooring was laid first. Wide European oak plank, board-selected for tone and grain, direct-stuck across the open-plan living, dining, and kitchen areas with threshold-free transitions. From the floor, the same oak rises into the stair: treads meeting boards in a continuous run, so the eye doesn’t register a change of material at the first step. On the upper and lower landings, the board direction continues uninterrupted across the gallery floors, reinforcing the sense of a single wood element threading the three levels together.
The scale sits behind the craft. 150m² of flooring is a modest number for a home of this calibre. And that’s the point. The floor isn’t trying to be the hero. The stair is. The flooring is the field the stair grows from. Getting the two to read as one material requires every board and every tread to be matched in board selection, tone, and direction. That’s the quiet discipline the project asks for; the curved balustrade is what the project gives back.
The build ran alongside Warwick Constructions’ programme through a dense trades sequence. We installed ahead of the joinery, protected every finished surface through subsequent stages, and delivered a deep clean on handover. The finished project is the result of a seamless collaboration between Matyas Architects & Interiors, Warwick Constructions, Market Timbers, and Mastercraft Flooring. Each held their part of the brief to the same high standard.
Three levels. One timber. The staircase is the house.
Oliver Davis, Founder