We’ve spent several thousand years perfecting the door. Now, apparently, the future of door technology needs Bluetooth. To be fair, there’s a lot to be said for a door that knows who you are, lets you in without fumbling for your keys and tells the facilities manager when something needs fixing. We’ve come a long way from the days when a lock, a handle and a reasonably sturdy set of hinges were considered quite sufficient.
Doors can already recognise digital credentials, open automatically and communicate with security and building management systems. Some of the technology is remarkably clever, and there’s plenty more on the horizon. But how much of it will genuinely make buildings better places to work, live and spend time? And how much is technology looking for something to do?
Will we still need keys?
The traditional key has a lot going for it. It’s cheap, familiar, doesn’t need charging and rarely requires an instruction manual. On the other hand, anyone who’s ever managed a large building will know what a nuisance keys can become. They get lost, copied, lent to colleagues and taken home by people who’ve long since left the building.
Electronic access control has made life considerably easier for building managers, and the latest developments are taking it further. Instead of issuing cards or fobs, organisations can give people access through their smartphones, with permissions managed remotely and changed whenever necessary.
Em-B has seen how useful this can be at Department Leeds, the co-working development at Leeds Dock. Its access control team designed and supplied a system based on Salto KS, incorporating automatic doors and speed gates. Members use their smartphones to enter the building, while the management team can control access permissions remotely. For a co-working building, where people come and go at different times and need access to different areas, this arrangement is particularly practical. Imagine trying to manage all those changing permissions with a cupboard full of keys and a spreadsheet.
Still, it would be premature to write the obituary for the traditional key. Smartphones run out of battery, get lost and occasionally decide to stop cooperating. Not everyone wants to use their personal phone to get into work, either. Plenty of situations call for a conventional mechanical lock, and the most technologically advanced option isn’t always the most appropriate.
Where did the door handle go?
As the technology inside doors gets cleverer, architects and designers are doing their best to make the hardware disappear altogether! Flush doors, concealed hinges, integrated locking mechanisms and discreet operating systems are increasingly familiar features of contemporary interiors. Sometimes the aim seems to be to make the door itself almost impossible to spot.
It can look wonderful, especially when a concealed door lets a wall finish or architectural detail continue uninterrupted. But achieving that apparent simplicity takes some fairly sophisticated engineering. The hardware still needs to support the door, operate it reliably, and meet whatever performance requirements apply.
There’s also the small matter of people being able to find and use it. A door that blends beautifully into a wall is one thing in a private residence, but quite another in a busy public building where people need to understand instinctively how to get through.
Perhaps we’ve reached an interesting point in architectural design. We’re developing increasingly sophisticated door hardware, then working equally hard to make sure nobody notices it.
Your door would like a word with the building manager
Doors are already quite sociable, electronically speaking. Access control systems can communicate with CCTV, intruder alarms, visitor management software, and other building systems, letting facilities teams control who goes where and track activity across large or complex premises.
What’s particularly interesting is what could happen when we start making better use of the information those systems collect. Take a busy commercial building. Some doors open hundreds of times a day, while others are used only occasionally. That information could help facilities managers understand traffic patterns, identify heavily used entrances and plan maintenance more effectively.
And rather than waiting for a door to become difficult to operate, connected hardware could potentially identify changes in performance and flag the need for attention. Predictive maintenance is already used in manufacturing and building services, so applying similar principles to door hardware isn’t much of a leap.
Whether building managers really want their doors generating another stream of data is a different matter. Modern buildings already collect plenty of information, and much of it is only useful if someone has the time, resources, and expertise to act on it.
There’s also the privacy question. Access control records can reveal quite a lot about people’s movements, so the temptation to collect and analyse ever more information needs to be tempered with some common sense and proper data protection.
A better way through
One area where advances in door technology could make a particularly worthwhile difference is accessibility. Automatic doors have been helping people move around buildings for decades, but integrating them with electronic access control can make them much more useful. For example, someone using a wheelchair may be able to approach a door, present a credential, and pass through without reaching a reader or operating a handle.
Depending on the equipment, operating sequences and opening times can be adjusted to suit the building and its users. Looking further ahead, it’s possible to imagine systems that recognise authorised users’ preferences and respond accordingly.
Perhaps a door could automatically allow more time for someone who needs it, or operate differently for people who find conventional door controls difficult to use. Obvious questions remain about how those preferences would be established and managed, but the idea is worth exploring.
Even the most advanced access control system won’t make a building accessible if the doorway is too narrow, the controls are out of reach, or the door is difficult to operate. These are things to consider at the design stage, rather than expecting technology to fix them later.
Could AI make doors more intelligent?
Artificial intelligence could have an interesting role to play in the future of door technology, particularly as doors become more closely connected to other building systems. AI-powered software can analyse large amounts of information, potentially identifying unusual access patterns, highlighting security concerns or recognising changes in equipment performance that might otherwise go unnoticed.
There are possibilities for building management, too. By analysing information from access control systems alongside other building data, AI could help facilities managers understand how spaces are being used and where maintenance or operational changes might be needed. However, the technology raises questions about privacy, cybersecurity and how much decision-making should be left to automated systems, particularly where security and safe access are concerned. The challenge will be finding applications that genuinely improve the way buildings operate, rather than introducing complexity for its own sake.
What happens when the clever stuff goes wrong?
Here’s the awkward bit. The more electronic systems we introduce, the more things can stop working. A conventional lock has relatively few components. An electronic access system might involve readers, controllers, electronic locking hardware, power supplies, software and connections to other systems. All of them need to be considered, particularly where a failure could affect security or people’s ability to move safely through a building.
Electronic access control has plenty of advantages, but it’s important to establish how the system will operate if something goes wrong. What happens if there’s a power cut, a reader stops working, or the connection to the central system is lost? These are all things to address during specification, particularly where electronic locking is used on fire doors or escape routes. The arrangements must allow people to escape safely and must be supported by appropriate fire performance evidence for the door set.
It’s also worth thinking about how long the equipment will remain serviceable. A commercial building could still be in use in 50 years, but the electronic access system installed today is unlikely to remain unchanged for that long. If the manufacturer stops supporting the software or replacement components become unavailable, upgrading the system could prove expensive and disruptive, particularly where the hardware has been integrated into the door. It’s worth establishing what can be maintained, replaced or upgraded before committing to a particular system.
It’s a good argument for considering maintenance, replacement parts, and long-term support at the specification stage, rather than leaving those problems for someone else to discover years later.
Now let’s get carried away
So what might doors be doing in another ten, twenty or thirty years? Some developments are fairly easy to predict because the technology is already available in one form or another. Others require a bit more imagination.
For example, we could see doors that respond to how people approach them. Imagine walking toward an entrance carrying a stack of files or pushing a trolley, and the door recognising that you need a little extra time or a different opening sequence. Sensors and automation already make parts of this possible, but building systems that can interpret different situations reliably would take further development.
Or perhaps doors will become rather good at looking after themselves. A connected door could monitor its operating cycles and performance, identify early signs of wear and tell the maintenance team when something needs attention. Take that a stage further, and it might identify the required component, check whether it’s available, and automatically raise a maintenance request. We rather like the idea of a door ordering its own replacement hinges, although I suspect facilities managers might want to retain some control over the purchasing budget.
Buildings could also become much more adaptable. A commercial development where the same spaces are used for offices during the day, meetings in the evening, and public events at weekends could use connected access systems to coordinate permissions and operating arrangements with room bookings and security requirements, letting the building accommodate different uses without anyone having to reprogram everything manually.
And then there’s the possibility of doing away with credentials altogether. Instead of carrying a key, card, or smartphone, we might eventually approach a door that simply knows we’re authorised to enter. The technology might use several different identification methods, but it’s easy to see how such systems could become intrusive. Would we really want buildings to identify everyone who walks toward a door? And what happens when the system gets it wrong?
Perhaps the most intriguing developments will be the ones we haven’t thought of yet. Doors that help manage a building’s energy consumption by coordinating with ventilation systems, for example, or entrances that respond to changing patterns of occupancy. The individual technologies aren’t entirely new, but bringing them together in more sophisticated ways could produce some interesting results.
And while we’re indulging in a little science fiction, how about a door that refuses to let you into yet another pointless meeting? Or one that reminds you you’ve left your laptop behind before you reach the car park? Perhaps we should draw the line at doors that greet us by name, ask about our weekends or comment on what we’re wearing. There’s already quite enough artificial conversation in the world.
Some things are better left alone
Despite all the technological possibilities, a door’s basic requirements haven’t changed much. It still needs to open and close reliably, provide the right level of security, let people move around safely, and withstand whatever demands the building places on it.
What has changed is the number of ways we can achieve those things. A modern door set might incorporate mechanical hardware, electronic locking, automatic operation, access management software and connections to other building systems. Making everything work together requires careful thought, particularly when the building is likely to outlive several generations of technology.
This is where experienced architectural ironmongery specialists such as Em-B have an important part to play. Understanding new technology helps, but so does knowing when a conventional mechanical solution will do the job just as well.
It’s tempting to imagine a future in which every door is intelligent, connected and capable of making decisions for itself. Perhaps some will be. But the cleverest door might still be the one that does exactly what it’s supposed to do, day after day, without anybody giving it a second thought. And preferably without requiring a software update on a Monday morning.
