A folded-plate steel staircase by Greene’s company, Iron & Wire.

There was a time when dazzling, large-scale works of art took center stage in Chicago homes with a Modernist edge. Now, it’s the equally important and similarly showstopping staircase.

You know the kind—those sculptural numbers that soar between floors and make a major design statement. In truth, “they’re works of art in their own right,” notes Joe Colosi of Milk Design, one of two Chicago designers mining the heights of this new milieu and making names for themselves.

The sculptural demeanors of these constructions may explain why they’re often the focal point in a home, though David Greene of Iron & Wire points out that “thanks to the rise of the open floor plan, the stairs are often the first thing you see when you walk in the front door.”

  A winding staircase in a Miami home by Colosi’s firm, Milk Design.

In Colosi’s staircases, treads, crafted in steel, glass, various woods, or even concrete, are threaded to a variety of steel support systems, and in some cases cantilevered directly over walls, to form ethereal floating trails between floors, sometimes straight up, sometimes spiraling, but always rising sleekly to make a dramatic, aerodynamic entrance to the next level.

Colosi, 44, took a circuitous route to design. His first official job was as a salesman at the East Bank Club, where he broke all quotas selling memberships but longed for something more hands-on. So he departed to help build 1531 on Kingsbury, a bar, where he met James Geier of the ubercreative design/build firm 555. He joined 555 a year later, and then went on to work as head of construction for Drink. There, he learned design and construction. When the bar closed, he switched to bartending, and got his DIY fix building out his own loft. So when the tail pipe on his truck broke, Colosi decided to fix it himself. The welder and grinder he bought at The Home Depot changed his life. “Within two weeks, I was making and selling furniture. I was never without work again,” he says. Pretty soon, Colosi was making furniture for Holly Hunt, Gary Lee, and Jill Salisbury in the residential market; restaurateurs Donnie Madia, Scott DeGraff and Michael Morton; as well as design maverick Lenny Kravitz.

Greene, 38, earned a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and became a sculptor. But when noted designer Suhail came calling and asked him to make furniture for a chain of salons, he realized he had an opportunity to use his artistic influence in an architectural medium. Projects poured in from around the country, and he moved his studio to Skokie.

Ironically, both men became stair masters inadvertently. In Colosi’s case, his friend Andreas Zafiriadis asked him to make a staircase for his Gold Coast business, Salon Buzz, in 2002, and more stair commissions followed. Greene also made his first set of stairs in 2002, for a West Town couple who were renovating a 100-year-old factory and cutting rafters out of the ceiling to make an atrium. When Greene saw them in a Dumpster outside, inspiration struck. With a little millwork, the rafters became the treads for their staircase.

Today, Colosi makes about 50 staircases a year, and Greene, who also makes furniture and sculpts, does around two dozen. And both men have completed projects all over the US. Colosi is also working on projects in Hawaii and the Caribbean. The national demand is proof they’re on to something. “Not to say I told you so, but it’s an unusual specialty,” says Colosi. And from what we can see, it’s a business that’s up, despite the economy.