This possibility is otherwise offered by outdoor stair-
cases, onto which one exits a building and from which one
views activities from above. From here, one can approach ar-
rivals as they ascend, performing a greeting as a reception.
Outdoor staircases, steps and terraces tie the building together
with the topography, and interlace the staggering of levels
via gradual transitions from inside to outside. Where stair-
cases in public spaces render high gradients negotiable, they
carve up slopes into steps and platforms, thereby converting
the uneven topography of an urban district, or even an entire
town, into a stepped landscape, examples being various lo-
cales along the Mediterranean coastline. Movement through
the city is thereby endowed with a certain dramatism, em-
phasizing a given district in relation to level ones. Spacious
staircases, particularly those dating from the Baroque era,
offer opportunities for making almost theatrical appear-
ances in urban space, an example being the Spanish Steps
in Rome, with their various landings, which serve as stages.
The arrangements of relatively shallow steps and stairs found
along rivers or seacoasts allow visitors to approach the wa-
ter cautiously and to control the degree of immersion in a
stepwise fashion, an example being the ghats found in India.
Water cascades and stepped turf are the only types of
steps that appear in landscape gardens, since the transition
between gradients is meant to appear maximally natural here.
In the formal (French) garden, on the other hand, the rise
and fall of uneven terrain is reshaped by means of a strictly
ordered composition made up of terraces, platforms, terraced
gradients, shallow steps, and ramps. The garden layout ac-
quires a special character as a kind of ‘hanging garden’ in
particular from a sequence of multiform gradations between
levels.
Literature: Bachelard 1964/1994; Giersch 1983; Meisen-
heimer 1983
