What is a Stellaract?

A stellaract¹ is a shape that combines a star and a square. It makes a pretty good north arrow² on all our floor plans, but more than that, it’s the north star of our design philosophy. It is often said in life that one cannot be both practical and idealistic—that one must be either an amoral pragmatist or an ill-fated, tragic idealist. You’re either a starry-eyed dreamer with your head in the clouds, or a grounded, down-to-Earth square. Stars are one of the most popular artistic motifs because they represent a thing both beautiful and unattainable, and “star-chitect” is synonymous with impractical design. “Putting people into boxes” by contrast is synonymous with dehumanization, repression, and limitation. Well, not for me.

When I was designing my first buildings as a child my older brother used to peer over my shoulder and mockingly ask “Are you making BOXES?” and walk away laughing, and I would cheerfully answer “yes”, and not understand the derision of the comment. “What’s wrong with making boxes? I love boxes.” I loved drawing on graph paper. I loved wrapping Christmas presents in neat prisms. I loved my Rubik’s cubes. I loved neatly filling in data in Excel. As one can imagine, I was overjoyed when Minecraft came out.

The Stellaract vision is proudly monist. I do not believe in fragile “ideals” that work in theory, but crumble to pieces in practice. Neither do I entertain the idea that there is a boring, dutiful, paper-pushing, practical side to life and design that exists separate from a high, sparkling, beautiful, and unsustainable ideal. On the contrary, there is nothing less practical and less sustainable to me than to sacrifice beauty to the doldrums of expedience. I absolutely insist on being both a star and a square, and my designs have to be stellaract too. If a design is beautiful but doesn’t work well, or vice versa, into the trash can it goes. That is the stellaract way.

Seamus Riley

stellaract (/ˈstɛlərækt/, STEL-uh-rakt)
1. noun — A shape that combines a star and a square.
2. adjective — Integrating both facts and ideals.
The first professionally issued Stellaract drawing. It is architectural convention for a firm to put its logo in the upper right of a sheet’s titleblock, and to locate a north arrow somewhere else on the sheet. At Stellaract our brand, our practical orientation, and our spiritual ideal are the same thing.