How do you frame a steel door in a curved gypsum board wall?
A flat door in a curved wall is not going to look very good. Why not put in a curved door? Dynamic does true curved doors in wood and can clad them if you want a metal finish. Perhaps instead on swinging on hinges, hang the door on a curved track using modern barn-style hardware.
http://www.dynamicwindows.com/traditional/traditionaldoors/interior.html
A curved glass door would be cool.
David,
I have done curved stile and rail doors with curved surround (hidden frame) and curved glass by Joel Berman Studios on Granville Island in Vancouver BC, Canada at the Smed Residence in Priddis Alberta. Mogens Smed was the owner of Smed International up to the early 2000s. He had access to some wild and crazy stuff plus highly skilled craftsmen.
Very expensive. Veneer was also very expensive.
The curved doors and curved surrounds give the appearance of a blind door. No frame visible either side, just a 1/8" margin.
Veneer on doors also extended over each side surround and over the head to ceiling in this project.
David: Do you want to frame a standard hollow metal door and frame in a curved wall? or specify a curved door and frame?
Several of us technical architects have been trying to tell the designer that it is not possible to put a standard steel frame (with wood door) in a curved gypsum board wall.
I have been searching the web for information, to no avail.
Right now the thought is to make a thick wall and put the frame inside the opening. But then we have to figure out what to do about the large gaps on the frame at the exterior of the curve.
Fill them with the designer’s thick head.
Good suggestion, but too dense to work with.
David,
My first thought was to ignore this, and the curved door design will disappear when the first cost estimate comes in.
Second, to redesign, make an indented flat portion of the thick curved wall to set the door into. Make a design problem into a design feature. Align the indent with another design feature on an adjacent wall, paint it an accent color, and tell the Architect it’d be really cool.
Lisa,
Your solution was also suggested by the Northwest Wall and Ceiling Bureau.
The curve is very slight. I think 80 foot radius. I recommend a segmented curved wall since there will be several doors in this wall.
The idea that anything is possible if you throw enough money at it has been around for a long time. There are companies that will manufacture curved hollow metal frames and doors: Karpen and Stiles come to mind. Whether the project budget is able to absorb the cost is another story. And of course, another consideration is will anyone else appreciate the subtlety of the design? Many times a designer has something WONDERFUL in mind, and when (if) it actually is constructed, no one notices it.
And sometimes the “Wonderful” is solely in the mind of the designer. The hard part is knowing when something is a pigment of the designers imagination, and when it is achievable. I like doing research of hard-to-do things, but there is a limit. After all, the research comes out of the project design/production budget and my time might have been better spent making sure the flashing was detailed correctly.
Assuming a 36 inch wide door, the arc length for an 80 foot radius associated with an inscribed 36 inch straight segment would be slightly more than 36-1/4 inches. (calculate it yourselves)
This reinforces Lynn’s comment that no-one will notice a straight door in a curved wall for the 80 radius.
I had a designer once who designed a segmented wall and then wanted the doors to meet at 7 degrees off of horizontal in order to match the segmented wall. When I went to the project manager to clarify this, his response was “Does this guy have clouds for feet?”.
(and to top it off, the doors were 8’-2-1/2" tall. )
First of all, is this a rated door?
The door will be a flat standard nonrated wood door in a flat standard steel frame.
It is entirely possible, given the radius, that the chord of the arc represented by the door width will be straight within the tolerances of the door frame fabricator. You might need to jury rig the jamb anchors some and probably need a bit of extra joint sealant at the top return. This would be the only way to do this with a “standard” (SDI) steel frame. The narrower the door width, the more likely this is to work.
You might be able to have a custom frame (HMMA) for a tighter curve. Remember the stop at the head has to be straight and in plane with the stops at the jambs. This means that the face of the frame will be curving parallel with the wall while the stop stays in the same plane. There may be a brake press out there that has a curved edge, but I suspect it will be in a very specialized shop. Another way this could be done would be to weld on the vertical piece (face) that will be curved to the flat piece that will have a curved edge. This also can be done.
By my calculations the amount of deviation from a straight line in a four foot segment of an 80 foot radius is slightly less than 3/8". I think that if the frame is made a little oversize relative to the thickness of the wall there won’t be a problem. Narrower openings will be even less of a problem.