Pivotal Decision

“I see this door as a microcosm of the whole house,” says architect and owner Elizabeth Danze, partner in the Austin, Texas-based firm of Danze Blood Architects. “It acts as a door but also a wall or a window, so it starts to question and modify basic architectural elements, which is what we tried to do throughout the whole house,” explains her partner and husband, John Blood. The concept came about before the house plans were finished, but since the door was imbued with such philosophical consequence they waited until they lived in the house for a while to design and build it. The door/wall separates the master bedroom from a public circulation/lounge area that has a nonstop panorama of Lake Austin. To reach the roof deck, guests have to traverse this “ribbon of circulation” that begins downstairs by the pool, so a partition was needed that would offer the bedroom privacy while enhancing the view. The 6-foot-wide by 8-foot-tall door swings open in either direction and features a translucent, red-orange panel that pivots independently within the larger door. Danze and Blood built the door-within-a-door themselves in their garage. Stained birch plywood attached to a clear pine frame with exposed finishing screws sets the scene for translucent pieces of honeycombed Panelite that add color and transmit light. The mechanism is based on the simple physics of balance and torque. “The whole thing pivots on a 1-inch, solid-steel hinge mounted on pillow blocks,” says Blood. A single piece of Panelite bolted on to a stationary rod serves as the door within a door.