A Small Key to Open Doors

There is a well-known idiom that states ‘A(n English)man’s home is his castle’.  It has its origins in a 1604 legal ruling  made by English judge, Sir Edward Coke in which he declared ‘the house of every one is to him as his Castle and Fortress’; much later the idiom cemented its place Australian culture as a central theme in the beloved 1997 movie, The Castle. Figuratively, the entrances to our homes signify the gates to our castles, our personal kingdoms where we rule, where we feel safe and protected, and we rely on the materiality, strength, and design of those entrances to subtly reflect us as inhabitants, and represent our kingdoms to the world beyond our doors.

Entrance, derived from ‘to enter’, implies that one has left one space and moved to another, that one has crossed a threshold and ventured into a place different to that beyond whatever structure signifies the boundary between the two.  The entry – its appearance and the method of – is a crucial element in the design of our homes.

From a practical point of view, a door is nothing but a moving element that both covers a break in the boundary around our ‘kingdoms’ and allows passage through to those we grant entry.  However, the entry has always represented a symbolic transition where humans have used a broad assortment of materials, structures, and emblems to reflect a statement of identity and intent.  Alongside these aesthetic aspects, a range of innovative mechanisms for the ‘how’ of entry have also been explored; methods including pivoting, sliding, swinging, turning, tilting, folding and rotating elements; manual and automatic.  Forms and functions that combine to provide an expression of the inhabitants within.

Luigi Rosselli Architects has always chosen to provide a dual value in their approach to the design of the front door: the way you enter and the way you leave are as important as the act of leaving or coming home.  One should feel immediately welcome when entering, and happy to return to the public realm when exiting.  Some like the feeling of being protected and so tend to conceive the door as a reinforced gate, always closed to the world outside.  Others like to leave their front doors open, to invite the light and the breeze through their screened gates and observe the world going by beyond the door.

Here we invite you to ‘knock on’ around Australia’s suburban kingdoms to discover some of the front doors, gates and entries designed by Luigi Rosselli Architects…