Episode 09: When is a Door Not a Door?

We all encounter doors and the handles, hinges and their other associated paraphenalia every day of our lives. But how much thought do we give them? A perhaps unconsidered opportunity to Make Life Better. By Design.

Transcript

Kevin: 0:10

Well, here we are again slightly late this week, for which I apologize. But nevertheless, welcome to another episode in the series. Make Life Better by Design With Me your host, Kevin Drayton. This week I want to talk about something that. A lot of us come into contact with pretty much every day of our lives, and that's the, perhaps not that interestingly, sounding doors, doors and in fact the assorted metal work that goes with them. Hinges handles, push plates, that sort of thing. It's known collectively in the trade as iron mony, regardless of what it's made of. However, before we dive into that I wanna give us a quick recap on some of the stuff that really forms the basis, the fundamentals of this podcast series. And that is to say that. I believe design is fundamentally about making choices and taking decisions. Now that being the case, everyone, as far as I'm concerned, is a designer and they are a designer of one of two types. What I call capital D designers who originate things really from scratch. And then everybody else that I call designers with the small D are the consumers who. Make choices and decide what they want to use from the choices that are available to them. So quick general recap, and now let's get down into the subject of, Ooh, doors and Iron Mon, no, it doesn't sound particularly sexy, but. You think how many times in a typical day you interact with a door and the stuff that's attached to it? And I would say that if a handshake tells you something about a person, then door handles are where you shake hands with a building. And I'll probably come back to that a bit later. So as kickoff by looking at the doors themselves, what is a door for? I would suggest it is a device for helping us to transition. From one space to another, outdoor to indoor hallway to bedroom, kitchen to pantry. It can provide security, thermal installation, sound installation. It can be discreet. It can be quite imposing. It can be very welcoming, can be open and transparent, or it can be completely opaque and the range of doors is, is enormous. The types of door was available. Yes, there is the side hinged door, which constitutes a very large percentage of the doors that we encounter on a daily basis, but they could be also sliding doors, folding doors, automatic doors, self-closing doors, fire resistant doors. The list goes on once you start to think about it. And that's without considering then the size of a door or what it's made of. So there's a lot of choice there. And that's before we even begin to think about the, the iron monist side of things. So, because. You do have this ongoing and quite intimate relationship with doors. It's worth thinking about them and how the design of doors and the associated iron mon can make your life better depending on how they're designed or rather more awkward. So let's just come back. We've talked about the basic doors for start. Let's have a think about iron mony. Now, iron mony could take up several podcasts. I'm certainly not intending to do that. Now. We may come back to may come back to the subject later on. If you think about the variations in hinges handles, uh, and just locks alone, that would take up several hours to talk about. But then of course, when you think about it, you've got push plates, kick plates, knockers, letter boxes, and all sorts of other things. So just to, to get a mental picture contrast a heavily built classical front door with raised and fielded paddles. If you're not familiar with the term, please look it up. It's got a big lion's head knocker. And a doorknob that's big enough to need two hands. Okay, now contrast that with a very rustic door, perhaps made of rough, flat timber planks held together with say, top and bottom horizontal rail and a connecting diagonal. That sort of door could well be operated by a a, a blackened thumb latch. If you know what I mean. And that's the sort of thing that could be turned out by a local blacksmith. Those are perhaps two extremes of style or what could I say, the sort of hierarchy of doors. And in between those, you've got more options than you can shake a stick at. And yet, and yet, and yet the typical daily default for a door would be a flush. That's to say flat faced door, probably about 800 millimeters wide and about. 2.1 meters high, it's probably side hinged, and it'll be operated by a, a lever latch with a lever handle, and it probably won't be a particularly good lever latch either. It's the minimum necessary to perform a basic function of a door. And if there's choice involved there, perhaps the only choice is between a paint grade flush door. Or supposedly slightly more up market one with a, a timber veneered face in some or species of wood that makes you realize how nice paint can be, uh, such as sapele. If you don't know what appeal looks like. By all means, look it up. It's pretty boring. Available from a lot of stock door companies. That's me showing my bias, which is not pretty good. It's hard for me to imagine anyone yearning for an 800 millimeter superiorly faced flush door. But rather, like they say about rats, you're probably never more than a few yards from one of them. A single door or doorway can contain more, a variety and complexity than an entire. Housing estate layout for that reason, it is well worth our consideration. So those are the, uh, the practical, the simple, materialistic things that you might want to think about with doors and iron mon group, but then we can go on to consider the more. Visceral and emotional, but equally important aspects of doors. How heavy is it? The feeling of opening and closing a heavy door is completely different from opening and closing. A very lightweight, flimsy one that whoa hardly feels as though it's there. It's a different experience. What does the handle feel like? Is it pleasurable to grasp or is it not particularly nice? There are door handles that are supposedly molded to the shake of a gripping hand, but it's often the case that something like a simple round bar shape is just as nice to use. And visually maybe more pleasing. I don't know. I'm not trying to say one's better than the other. As always, with these podcasts, I'm really asking you to think about it and think how the different elements, the different aspects affect your life and whether choices that you make decisions you take in that field. May perhaps improve the quality of your life. What else have we got? We've got does the Door Creek? Goodness knows. Dracula films wouldn't be the same without that castle entrance, door creaking and groaning as the terrified visitor steps over the threshold. Does it weather badly? If it's facing south and it's getting wind and rain thrown at it all the time as well as the sun is, it does it need to be redecorated every year, which can be a pain. Does the postman's hand get caught in a letter box? My family has a long association with the post office and delivering letters. And it, it's a real thing. Yes. Uh, blood on the letters doesn't go down very well with many people, even if it's their own letterbox that's caused the problem. Moving on. Next consideration I would suggest can be scale. Scale is fantastically important for both practical and psychological reasons. How easy is a door or doorway to negotiate if you've got luggage shopping, children, pets? Furniture, uh, set of ladders, yes. You may say, well, that's just down to how bigot is which may be the case. But a door that is difficult to open is trying to shut itself all the time as you are working your way through with three bags of shopping can be a real nuisance. Let's look at perhaps another aspect of choice when it comes to doors and door materials and iron mon as well. I mean, have you considered. Do you need a door at all? Can we do away with doors? If you are designing for a building type, such as a say a swimming pool, doors can be a real liability. The wet, humid environment you get in something like a swimming pool can play havoc. With a standard door material than standard iron mony, a door that can cope fully with the conditions in a space like that will not be cheap. Therefore, the fewer of them that you need the better, less capital cost, less maintenance, less revenue expenditure. And it's very often the case that with careful placement of the entrances to spaces so that sight lines are taken into consideration and privacy can be maintained, you can do away with a number of doors that would all otherwise be added in automatically. All this from the humble doorway, but I've also talked about psychological and emotional responses that doors could evoke. They've had Dracula's Castle we used to have. We don't so much nowadays have. The doors into Victorian banks,

Kevin A: 13:37

building societies, the sort of places that were meant to slightly intimidate the visitor. And it brought to mind a story actually of the very first house that I bought. It was a very, uh, unassuming, modest, semi-detached house. One of several in the, the road that I lived on. It had been volume built. I presumed by a local builder. I never really found out, and that was probably in, I would say the 1950s. Now the cellar, very nice woman, showed me around the house, which didn't take that long, and as we were going round, I remarked to her that the door between the kitchen and the living room was unlike most, if not all the others in the house. Which were, yes, your standard flat faced painted flush doors. But this one, this one between the kitchen and the living room was glazed. Big glass panel, not particularly unusual or special. Readed glass in a painted frame, perfectly nice. And when I commented on this the seller said to me that actually a bean, a present for her from her husband. And she was so attached to it. It meant so much to her that she would be taking it with her when they moved. And true to her word, uh, it was taken off. And replaced with yet another standard flush faced, painted 800 millimeter wide door that was there when I moved in. So there we are, doors and iron hungry at first sight, perhaps. Oh, crikey. Don't really want to spend time thinking about that, but there's a world out there. There really is. If you have the opportunity to take some decisions, make some choices about doors and ironmongery in the environment you encounter day to day, give it some thought; again, thank you for joining

Kevin: 16:05

me

Kevin A: 16:06

and I very much hope we'll meet up again soon. Until then,

Kevin: 16:09

take the opportunities that come

Kevin A: 16:11

your way to make life better by design. Bye for now.