Hunt for Safe Staircases Gives Career a Lift : Architect: John Templer calls stairs one of the world’s most dangerous products.

Novelist Gustave Flaubert once said: “Architects, all idiots; they always forget to put in the stairs.”

Sometimes that’s a good thing, said one of the defamed, John Templer.

The architect calls stairs one of the world’s most dangerous products. He has spent 23 years climbing them, from the Spanish Steps in Rome to New York’s Lincoln Center, to prove his point.

“Stair safety should matter as much as brakes on a car,” said Templer, who designed the staircase in his Atlanta home with safety features. “But people don’t think of stairs as dangerous.”

They should. Every year, 1 million Americans seek medical treatment for falls on staircases. About 50,000 are hospitalized and 4,000 die.

The United States isn’t unique. In Japan, more people die on stairs than in fires, Templer said. But stair safety has largely been ignored, Templer said.

Architects still build steps for the size of shoe people wore in 1850. Templer said stairs are slippery, too steep, often badly built and have inadequate railings.

Templer, a Georgia Tech architect who has traced the history of steps in a two-volume book called “The Staircase,” is on a quest for the perfect stairs.

His interest began as a student at Columbia University, when someone asked him why people were always falling down the steps outside Lincoln Center. Templer discovered there was no research on stair safety. Nobody even counted falls.

Curious, he visited Lincoln Center with his family and his sister-in-law tripped on the steps. Templer called his mentor to propose the topic as a thesis and learned that the man had just broken his leg falling down a stairwell of a subway station.

A career was born.

“All stairs are dangerous; it’s a matter of degree,” Templer said. “There are ways to mitigate the danger, if we could get that message to people.”

Stairs evolved from ladders and first were used for defense. Narrow winding staircases, for instance, hampered intruders. Europeans wrought stairs into works of art, building grand palace staircases that gradually steepened, forcing visitors into a slow, stately pace as they approached royalty.

Most stairs have 9-inch treads and 8 1/2-inch risers, a size determined around 1850, Templer said. But people today have bigger feet that hang over the edges of stairs, throwing them off balance, he said.

Stairs also are too high, Templer concluded after experiments in which he forced volunteers to trip on collapsible stairs. They were harnessed so they didn’t tumble all the way to the floor, but Templer used videos to simulate how they would have landed.

He wants building codes revised for stairs with 11-inch treads and 7-inch risers. His proposal prompted a lobbying blitz from the National Assn. of Home Builders, which contends that larger stairs would add at least 150 square feet and $1,500 in costs to a typical house.

Richard Meyer of the builders’ association dismissed Templer’s work, saying people fall when stairs are improperly lighted, have loose carpeting or have objects placed in the way.

That’s true, too, Templer said. But he said his experiments, funded by the National Science Foundation, prove stair shape is a large problem. And, he added, the steps in many staircases aren’t even the same size--a sure way to trip people up.

“Get out a measuring tape and measure the darn thing,” he advises home buyers.

Slowly, other architects are beginning to agree. Canadian researchers using trick stairs showed most banisters are too low to stop falls. Public buildings with wide, shallow steps often have them painted to catch people’s attention.

In his home, Templer’s gracefully curving staircase forces people to walk slowly. The 11-by-7 steps alternate light and dark brown so each is visible. The banister is covered with foam and leather for a good grip. The non-skid carpeting covers thick padding to cushion any fall.

“We have enough knowledge now to be able to make reasonably safe stairs,” he said. “It’s like building a 1900 automobile today, without the seat belts and the air bags, even though you know better. There’s no excuse.”