Noard 99

What can you tell us about this project?
This project was born four years ago by merging two apartments into one. Both houses were part of a new construction complex but they were too small for our needs. So, the best way around this problem was to redesign the whole layout ourselves by making it wider and more suitable for a wheelchair user. As I work with exhibitions design and museum layouts it was natural for me to take an active role in this project. The intention was to create the perfect balance between my professional and my personal life. Through the usage of pocket doors, I managed to create a good relationship amongst these two worlds and to optimize space by dividing it when I needed it to be more private and to open it when I wanted to enjoy the perks of having an open space.

What role do you think a door can play in a project?
I believe doors must be effective above all things. Firstly, they have to optimize circulation and secondly, they need to improve our daily life. The house is like our “second skin”, the place where we spend most of our time, so it needs to suit the requirements of the family who inhabits it. That is why rebuilding this house was so important to us. Being able to remake all of the internal partitions was the best way to combine all of our wishes both workspace and living. Also, in the public-sector doors are a way to control circulation within an environment, they are the best crowd control system, especially if we’re talking about sliding doors. Because of their opening method, sliding systems are able to grant or close passage between two rooms without occupying space and avoiding all types of complications.

What made you choose Ermetika's products?
In the Nederlands it is not common to use pocket door systems for sliding doors especially in a residential apartment. We are used to installing wall mounted tracks but mostly in hospitals or public buildings. Due to my health condition, I was confronted with the need to improve the rooms to facilitate movement between them. We were looking for new products that could help us do that and came across Ermetika through their retailer Bestfix. They had a wide range of products that could adapt to the dimensions that we were looking for and offered the frameless sliding doors with the automatic opening accessory. It was quite a challenge to install these doors because carpenters in Holland are not used to these procedures, but in the end with the support from Bestfix and the Ermetika’s technical team we were able to fulfil this task with flying colors.