Okay, while this technologically advanced door is within the technical realm of this category, it really isn’t within the spirit … it doesn’t have a handle and you can’t walk through it (yet), but it is a clever old door nevertheless. This is the Electrolux Screenfridge, a simple name for a very intricate piece of electronics. It is a prototype refrigerator which has a digital camera inside. The digital camera takes a picture and uploads it to a server every time the door closes – another weapon in the crime fighting arsenal of the missing chocolate detectives! When you are...

AT Architectural Classics, we have known for quite a long time about the bactericidal properties of copper (and its alloys, including brass). We have written on it quite a lot … including the value of having traditional handles in the germ-swamp that is a public lavatory, the health virtues of having your home decked out in brass as well as the visual virtues, etc. Scientists worldwide have also known this for quite a while, as would you if you have been following the blog! However, the news truly is ‘new’ for the International Copper Association, strangely enough. Reuters reports...

Edwardian architecture is a lot less ornate than the Victorian style which preceded it … You can imagine King Edward coming in after old Vicky, looking around at the country and muttering “Bloody women! There’s crap everywhere! Look at all this trinketry and frou frou! Get rid of it all!” … then he’d sweep his arm over the tabletop of the country’s architecture, wiping off all the irrelevant details and leaving the bones. Although that is not to say that Edwardian architecture was boring - you can see how this house makes use of minimal colouring and decoration,...

Joining the extensive realms of useless inventions, and the equally extensive realms of useless inventions related to doors, are these bright doors from Alexander Lervik. Although, we must admit to being strangely attracted to them, in a visceral sort of way … not everything in life must be functional to be beautiful, as the Art Deco movement and supermodels the world over understand! These bright doors build on the last post in our Beyond Door Thousand series, which looked at the Brighthandles door handles, which glowed green or red according to the position of the thumb latch – locked or...

This beautiful, mechanically mysterious old lock belongs to a door in Sweden. If you have a genuine old house, this is probably what the insides of your rim locks look like! Aside from being a fascinating subject, it is a great photo – love how the hints of green patination on the round face in the middle of the photo echo the green grass, and the textures in the photo just seem to leap out at you.

If you are a period-style home renovator, a modern home renovator, an historian, someone with an interest in architecture, an architect, a man, a woman, black, white or something in between, then you should find this month’s Site of the Month fascinating! We have stumbled upon greatbuildings.com, a searchable database of hundreds of beautiful, striking, odd, crazy, gravity-defying and otherwise amazing buildings, the world over. You can search by a whole host of different criteria, including by Architectural Style, which makes this site an invaluable reference if you are doing your home...

So many of our impressive doors are on churches, and interestingly, there seems to be few stylistic boundaries for the Church … any church! This is the entrance to a modern Catholic Church in Munich, and really creates a defined, calming and soulful theme for the entire building. The half-seen reflections in the door and front wall are a lovely metaphor for the grabs of truth that church attendees are trying to find, while the blue should have a calming effect … although it is definitely vibrant enough not to send people to sleep!

These illuminated door handles are a technologically advanced take on the simple flip-lock with a little circle on the other side … they are from Brighthandle, and when you turn the privacy latch, the glowing part on the end of the handle turns green or red, depending on whether you have locked or unlocked the door. Sure, we all love technology … but there are some things which are really, really unnecessary. We know that our grandparents were saying that about mobile phones 15 years ago, but of this we are actually pretty certain. It seems that the only person that would have the money and...

Here are a couple of things I bet you didn’t know about architectural salvage. For starters, when you recycle something that is in an old house in another house, did you know that you are actually ‘un-building’, in a Mad Hatter twist on renovation?! It is also known as Deconstruction, although I think the Deconstructivists might have something to say about that. Around 85% of materials in old homes can be re-used, according to a non-profit association in Pennsylvania in the States. So here we are looking at some of the ways you can use unbuilt houses in building or decorating...

This awesome door handle is titled “The Lock of the Genies” on Flickr … a beautiful, magical name that suits the handle and lock to a tee! The shadows in the picture help you feel the burning heat of the desert sun, and to imagine the cool caverns possibly shielded by the door, filled with blown glass lamps and hallways littered with stacks of gold coins. Such a gorgeous and vivid red metal that the handle is made of, also! If anybody knows what it might be, please let us know