Amazing Door Wows Design Award Judges Before They Even Get Into Houses

Architectural Review has tapped four projects by young architects in its annual Emerging Architecture Awards. The projects include one gorgeously rustic school in China; a lovely, sylvan research office in Spain; an elegantly minimal friar's quarters in Ireland; and also...a door.

Granted, the door had to be pretty damn cool to win out over entire buildings.

Created by Matharoo Associates for a diamond merchant in India, the door is a whopping 17 feet high and five-and-a-half feet wide, and comprises 40 sections of Burmese teak, each of them nearly a foot thick. Each section revolves around some pretty complex machinery: The door's single pivot hides a counterweight, 80 ball bearings, and 160 pulleys.

But they all work together invisibly. Push on any one plank, and all 40 sections reconfigure themselves into a sinusoidal curve, revealing an opening into the house.

For more pics, check out Architectural Review.