In the woods outside of Devon in the UK, sculptor Peter Randall-Page works out of the Art Barn, his studio and gallery. Designed by his son, architect Thomas Randall-Page of Thing Studio, the Art Barn features two kinetic tricks. The first came about because "there was the desire to include a balcony," Thomas writes. "This seemingly impossible contradiction led us towards an unusual solution. I began to draw ideas for a folding balcony in my sketchbook , originally inspired by castle drawbridges with their chain supports and counterweights. Through a series of iterations, I developed an idea for a vertically bi-folding design that allowed an upper leaf of cladding to become the floor of the balcony and the hinged lower leaf to form a triangulated support, removing the need for suspension cables. Initially, through rough physical models and later through more accurate digital models, I was able to define a geometry and mechanism that folded to the correct form and incorporated two counterweighted elements to keep the whole system in balance. The three counterweights consist of a pair of solid steel rods that slide up behind the cladding as the balcony opens, acting like sash weights for the upper leaf, and a large stone weight that is supported by extended arms on the lower leaf beyond the pivot, thus balancing the lower leaf's weight. This balanced system eliminates any need for motors and allows the balcony to be operated much like a manual garage door. The next challenge was to provide a simple handrail that could also fold away behind the cladding. I finally arrived at a hinged goalpost-type module with a pair of hinged stays that lock when straightened. This bespoke assemblage folds flat into the zone between the glazed door and the upright cladding. The second is a window that does not open up-and-down, nor swing in-and-out. Rather, it rotates on the coronal* plane. (*There are three axes of rotation, relative to the position of the human body: Sagittal, co

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