Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

When architect Eric Rothfeder undertook the renovation of a 1,600-square-foot Chicago apartment that functions as a live/work space, it came with a challenge. A new and improved high-efficiency electric heat pump replaced the old gas-burning furnace—you love to see it. What you don’t love to see, however, is the access door, which is prominently situated just across from the entryway.

The door needed to perform a clever trick: to disappear while remaining accessible. Rothfeder’s solution was to turn it into a design feature, and he understood that the client wanted something playful that still worked within the context of the modern, minimalist design of the space. You’d never guess what they came up with: a life-size Lite-Brite-inspired door.

The door provides an unmistakable pop of color in an otherwise quiet space where there’s an emphasis on natural hues and patterns in the materials.

It’s more of an art installation than it is a doorway, while still fitting in with the overall aesthetic. The door is heavy and large, though, and it wasn’t just a matter of putting some pegs on a frame and calling it a day.

Here’s how they made their giant spin on a beloved childhood game work:

How they pulled it off: A Lite-Brite lookalike door

“The door is actually made of several layers—the first layer is an oversize (but otherwise) standard door,” Rothfeder says. “On top of that are strips of magnetic steel, painted black. The final layer is joined boards of solid oak that were processed through a CNC machine to create holes in a gridded dot pattern.”
“Each hole in the wood reveals the steel layer beneath it. The colored pegs are made from wood, painted in the most fluorescent, brightest paint products we could find, and have a small Rare Earth magnet on the backside.”
The magnets are key to keeping the pieces in place when the door opens, and the entire installation is nine feet by five feet.
It comprises 684 holes that are each two inches in diameter.
All the layers are glued together with an elastic adhesive since changes in temperature and humidity will cause the wood and metal to expand and contract differently,” Rothfeder says.

The access door does not light up like the toy that inspired it, but it is playable, and Rothfeder says every time he’s over there, the pegs are in a different configuration. Still, the extremely heavy door remains hidden. There’s no handle or to be seen; rather, it’s opened using an industrial latch touch mechanism.

The life-size Lite-Brite lookalike is unmissable against the restrained palette of white, oak, and black, and it makes for a big moment when you first set foot inside. “The door also relates to the overall apartment design—the dot grid maintains the oak and black palette—and the dot pattern relates to the custom Richlite pegboards that we installed in other rooms in the apartment,” Rothfeld says. “In a way, it’s a distillation of the design ethos of the apartment—a mixture of minimalism and playfulness.”

Project Credits:

Architect: ERA / Eric Rothfeder Architect

Landscape Architect: McKay Landscape Architects

Lighting Design: The Cosine

Mechanical Engineer: One World Consulting

General Contractor: J Patrick Construction

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