Door

February 11, 2014 3:46 PM

Entrance worthy of...? SLYT. Lingering in the doorway not advisable.
posted by VikingSword (19 comments total)

So cool. I have a burning physical desire to feel what it's like to use it. The glass version also looks amazing (and not at all like an accident waiting to happen).
posted by billiebee at 3:55 PM on February 11, 2014

Oh, great. Who told the Minecraft mod people about the real world? This will end badly.
posted by oulipian at 4:08 PM on February 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Happy customers include Jim Abbott, Peter Pettigrew, and Doctor No.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:20 PM on February 11, 2014

Sometimes when God closes a door, He opens a window an artery.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:25 PM on February 11, 2014 [29 favorites]

You ever notice those plastic wedges guarding escalator pinch points (like this)? Ever wonder why they have those? Yeah.
posted by mhum at 4:32 PM on February 11, 2014

We wanted a simple block of flats.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:35 PM on February 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

I want these in my life so bad it hurts.
posted by wemayfreeze at 4:59 PM on February 11, 2014

When you have one, your fingers will, too.
posted by notyou at 5:05 PM on February 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

In the future, all doors will look like this. Our bleak, horrible, pinchy future.
posted by angerbot at 5:08 PM on February 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

If they machine the edge of that door a bit more, it will cut cleaner and be easier for the surgeon to sew back on.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:16 PM on February 11, 2014 [4 favorites]

Such a slooooow door. Kramer disapproves.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:18 PM on February 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that would be totally incompatible with a toddler in the house. I am imagining a decapitation and I wish I weren't.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:24 PM on February 11, 2014

This offers no improvements over existing doors, and many downsides.

For instance, you can't open the door a bit. It's all the way or nothing. Nearly all standard door interactions involve opening it, passing through it, and closing it again. But now you've got to wait for the thing to open itself before you can trigger it to close. You know those infuriatingly slow electric-opening, swinging doors? (Often upgrades to entrances to make them handicapped-accessible.) This is just like that, only you have to wait around until you can close it manually. Oh, and it will actually make you handicapped.
posted by waldo at 5:33 PM on February 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

You know that scene in The Incredibles when Elastigirl is stretched between two or three sets of doors? Because I'm trying to picture that scene with these now.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:46 PM on February 11, 2014

YES!!! This will finally complete my super-villain lair!
posted by TDavis at 5:56 PM on February 11, 2014

How would you lock that?
posted by OHSnap at 6:10 PM on February 11, 2014

Torggler's site. There's several versions there, this being the simplest of three or four mechanisms for achieving essentially the same design. The youtube clips aren't entirely clear, but it seems to me that the pinchiness that people are perceiving in this clip is partly a matter of where the door is placed in relation to frame (if the pinch point is past the edge of the frame it's less of a problem), partly an issue of how finely balanced the thing is, partly an optical illusion (particularly in the triangle mechanism version, which folds outwards as it opens or closes), and partly material dependent (a wood framed fabric covered door - the triangle mechanism version - is going to be less dangerous).

If it is a major problem, the steel door shown with rod mechanism above is the worst offender amongst the group, and some of the other designs seem to nearly eliminate it.

That said, I'm not sure even the rod mechanism door shown above is necessarily all that dangerous. That's because, as the door opens, the pinch point is at or seemingly beyond the edge of the frame in some of the online clips - eg the glass door with rod mechanism - and the mechanisms appear to be exquisitely well balanced. I'm no engineer or OHS expert, but it seems to me that if you stuck an object in that closing gap, it would either stop the door or the movement of the closing "scissors" towards the frame would "push" the object outwards away from the pinch point.

Which doesn't answer the possibility of someone stuck in it on one side, and someone simultaneously trying to open or close it from the other, but that could happen with closing any ordinary door. HELP! MY HEADS STUCK IN THE DOOR!

Anyway, I'd want to try one out before passing judgement, and it's a set of fascinating designs. Thanks Vikingsword.

Does that make any sense at all or should I go and have another coffee?
posted by Ahab at 6:20 PM on February 11, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is an example of 'form over function.' Very cool for those who can afford that level of cool, but not really very useful.

Beautiful though.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:25 PM on February 11, 2014

I disagree. It doesn't require the space of a swinging door, or waste energy like a sliding one. If the door halves are balanced then the energy used to raise one half comes from lowering the other. Compare that to a sliding door, where you need a shove to start it opening and another shove to stop it - and all this while riding on a track that's susceptible to jamming. I don't think the pinch point is a problem either: if you look at the animation you can see that there's no pinch for most of the travel, and at the end of the travel the pinch tends to push anything out of the join.

The big problem I see is that it won't make a solid closure without assistance. It needs some sort of cam or magnets or something to let you close it tightly.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:56 AM on February 12, 2014