Entrance portals and gates in downtown Lodz. Closures or Openings?

Abstract

Entrance portals and gates are the elements of the city's architectural environment with which we commune on a daily basis, often unknowingly. Now and again they contain architectural codes that convey to us relevant information about the building or its function. Gates and Portals create an occlusive, orderly space which brings together, and at the same time divides three worlds: the street, the house, and the backyard. This article aims to show that the building entrances not only constitute its closure, but can and often are the carrier of information about the building and their functions or what is in their interior. Therefore, they are also openings to something new, often something interesting, hidden in the nooks of the buildings' architecture. In addition, portals and gates, and especially their doors, are sometimes small works of art that show extraordinary carpentry, woodcarving or metalwork craftsmanship. Others, on the other hand, do not stand out at all, but it are worth looking inside and searching for traces of splendor past and present. The entrance to a building is an important architectural element, which we use involuntarily when crossing the invisible barrier between the inside and the outside, between the private, semi-private and public zones.