The gesture of opening always implies that of closing. The door, an object of daily use that we hardly look at anymore, has an important symbolic value: opening to and, simultaneously, closing off different worlds. There are many metaphors bound to the verb 'open': open one's eyes but also open the mind and the heart, as the ancient sages of the Orient and the Occident counseled. Mysticism teaches us that 'to close' is equal to keeping, jealously conserving what is most important (the Divine is where opening and closing are symmetrical metaphors and, as the great Oriental tradition teaches us, are strictly bound to sexual metaphors). Western architecture has been built around the duo of open/closed: the castle (close in order to protect); the church (guard God's flock, as well as open the mind's eye to beauty and goodness); the university (open the mind to truth through knowledge and wisdom). These were the first subjects of study in the traveling seminar.

The Competition Workshop 'Hiraku-Shimeru' (Japanese for to open / to close) was organized in 1996 at the request of the Union Ltd., a leading Japanese firm in door handle production. The Workshop, conceived to investigate the concepts of 'opening' and 'closing' in history and to plan innovative forms for door handles and hinges also offered an extraordinary opportunity for study to six young designers.
The Workshop approach, a traveling seminar, allowed a kind of osmosis between the themes dealt with in meetings and lessons, and verification in the field. Numerous projects, born during the seminars, were influenced by this original approach, both in richness of form and in the variety of design styles.