Those two amazing sets of stairs are from the Didden Village project by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV. The project itself is a rooftop addition in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The exterior is a stark contrast to its surrounding (and may not be to everyone's tastes), as you can see in the link below, but the interior stairs are amazing!
@c-dub: You are right. In Holland you don't have to call anybody before hoisting your furniture. Except maybe some friends with strong arms.
I couldn’t say for sure that there is some provision here for hoisting, but that is the typical approach in Dutch cities. (There wouldn’t be gantry beams in these gables in any case, since those are penthouse structures: you’d only be able to lift materials off the roof terrace, not the street.) And hoisting isn’t as big a deal as you might think. I’ve hoisted pianos and other large items up the exteriors of buildings in a few cities, including midtown Manhattan. It’s actually easier over public property than private; you just have to make a call or two, and follow certain safety precautions. I would imagine it’s even easier in Holland, since it’s so commonplace – and since they aren’t nearly as litigious as we are in the US.
Architects do make really basic mistakes all the time.
Where I live, hoisting your furniture up a rope would entail a nightmare of health and safety issues. They wouldn't allow it if you lived on a public road (danger of injury to the public).
tripleX has it right. Urban houses in the Netherlands often don’t rely on the stairs for moving large items; gantry beams over upper-story windows are used to lift and lower bulky items like mattresses and appliances. It makes perfect sense: why design a building around a need that arises only every year or two? We build too much waste and fat into our housing in the US, and the Dutch are far more clever and capable than we are when it comes to designing both homes and cities. They have too little land to waste any of it to careless design or cheap construction. Here, we can just keep sprawling out further and further into the landscape, so we regard buildings as disposable consumer goods. While we’re wrapping wood 2x4’s in toxic vinyl, they’re wrapping cast concrete in terra cotta tiles.
As far as the aesthetics of the blue exterior go, to each his/her own. You might not want to look at their blue penthouse, but they might not want to look at the soul-deadening monotony of your neighborhood.