Barn-door cabinets. Does your family have a cabinet-door-closing problem? If you are tired of walking into the kitchen to see every single cabinet door flung wide open, perhaps it’s time to ditch the doors. Barn-style sliding doors are the perfect compromise between traditional doors and open shelving — they let you hide the mess but leave some things open and airy. And no one will ever forget to close the doors again.
CUCINA: Here's another example of a sliding door functioning as a wall. The architect made a conscious decision to conceal the sliding track in the ceiling to allow the proportions of the room and the adjacent stone wall to dictate the panel size, rather than the opening its meant to conceal. So the wall panel has become another tonal element in the architectural material palette, along with the wood floor and stone wall. It's rendered here in wood, but a sliding door panel such as this could be almost any material — cast glass, perforated metal, etched stone — and function as both a sliding art object and a door.
The door here reaches vertically to touch the ceiling. It's clearly larger than it needs to be functionally, and thus is playing by a different set of rules. Notice that it matches precisely the proportion of the glazed opening. I particularly like that the solid mass of the island contrasts the glazed opening, while the open walkway leads to the solid door. These reversals and contrasts are complex and engaging experiences enhanced by the bold door choice.
Operable panels. The true engawa has sliding doors (fusuma) and screens (sudare, or shoji) on both the interior and exterior faces. Configured this way the engawa can act as a giant insulated shell for the interior spaces, and the prevailing weather patterns can suggest which panels are opened or closed. In temperate weather the interior panels can be slid away while the exterior ones remain closed, expanding the interior space. In cold weather they can all be closed; in warm weather, all open.
Creating a place that coexists with nature always requires some adaptation of the shelter to make best use of a particular environment. The engawa is an ingenious device for allowing a home to buffer climatic changes. It’s much like dressing a building in layers. Too hot? Slide open the shutters. Too windy? Slide them closed.
cucina semichiusa
. Split-level deck. Try a deck with a few levels to create the feeling of different zones in a small outdoor space — even a slight shift in height can add a lot of visual interest. Perhaps put seating on one level, a grill on another and leave one open as pass-through space.
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