Thinking outside the box

The original shell was a 3 car garage in an old machinery shed which had seen better days. Tina told Monarch Renlita she wanted to maintain the original openings, each 3mm wide by 2.5m high, so that the studio could open up to the outside elements. The challenge was creating a door that would open all the way out to a horizontal position without having to fold partly inside the building taking up valuable studio space.

Monarch Renlita went to work on creating a door that could function as requested. In applications like this, a counterweight door is often used but it was decided it would take up too much space inside the building. The same problem was found with rolling and sliding doors as both solutions needed space that wasn’t available.

As a solution to this challenge, Monarch Renlita ingeniously designed a hydraulic system to bare the weight of the steel door frame and the reflective glass cladding. The hydraulic system offered ease of opening a door far too heavy to lift manually. It also provided an awning giving shelter from weather when the studio decided to open up.

The reflective glass cladding proved to be a challenge in itself as the design of the building had a flush finish. This meant the doors needed to sit perfectly flush to the cladding on the side of the building so when closed would form a single wall. Monarch Renlita fortunately have extensive experience, as well as a desire for perfection, and as you can see in the images below, installed the doors in perfect alignment to the surrounding walls. They were also asked to clad the rest of the façade in the reflective glass which they completed along with the doors.

The client is now operating out of the black box which from the outside reflects the surrounding sky and vegetation and from the inside, provides a minimalist and modern office space that can open up and join the outside world.