dragonfly

dragonfly by arianna cola from italy

designer's own words:

dragonfly ( libellula)

my design comes from the observation of the “movement” of a handle with the shape of a slim wing...
drawing the rotation of this wing, an elegant shape formed itself, made of two wings...that, besides representing a new eye-catching aesthetic effect, they might embody new functional skills.

1) the two wings together form a beautiful volume with soft organic shapes, and, when moved together, they are used for the simple and repetitive use of “opening” and “closing” the door.

2) the smaller wing, with an ergonomic shape, can be rotated clockwise just using two fingers: its rotation ensures that the door is locked because it clicks a locking system, a latch...
it becomes the alternative to the key and to the keyholes that, in my opinion, are aesthetically anachronistic...
to unlock the door, it's just necessary to lift up the “wing” that goes back to its previous position.

from these considerations, automatically, i thought about the idea and the possibility of a the asymmetry of the handle that is an interesting concept...

a) the interior handle of a room is made of two elements, one of them is for locking the door
b) the exterior handle is made of only one element though it has a small safety hole for unjamming the door lock, from the outside, if needed.

however, if the asymmetry of the handle is considered too daring or complicated, the handle might be symmetric and have two elements either for the interior or the exterior of the door and the smaller element, in the exterior of the door, might work, as well, for locking the door from the outside, but may be the mechanism would become too complicated...
besides, usually the door is closed from the inside..

materials
due to safety considerations, the two elements will be made of metal (brass) which is the best material for resistance and is possible to realize sculptural forms
to distinguish the two elements that have different role, they could have a different aesthetic treatment: the bigger element, for instance, might be chromium plated and the smaller element might be opaque and matt or the other way round...
besides, they might even have slightly different colours.

my design is a “typological” innovation and this means that it can be applied through several formal combinations, the concept remains the same.
this design is just one of the possible combinations...

i have also studied other functional and aesthetic combinations that might accomplish other skills and that i will explain furthermore if “dragonfly” will be selected.

concept

copy_48_tav2.jpg elements united

copy_1_tav4.jpg door locked

tav44.jpg exterior door