Page D-9 NYTimes 02-MAR-2000 Italian Designers make doors that fade into the Sunset By JULIE V. IOVINE Leave it to Italians to solve a design problem homeowners didn't know they had: clunky doors. Try achieving a sleek and modern interior while dealing with throwback elements like doorjambs and thresholds, lintels and hinges, much less carved paneled doors. It's enough to make a minimalist swoon. Consider instead a glass-and-aluminum wall system. It is so sophisticated, it is not even known as a door, much less as a room divider. Architectural without being massive, the wall system has glass panels that are set into an aluminum frame and hung from ceiling tracks. The system, which also comes in a variety of materials and colored glasses, glides with barely a touch, its panels lapping one over the other in various combinations. It can even pull a disappearing act, like a good major-domo, into the wall. Several Italian companies have recently introduced these un-doors to an American audience hungry for renovation ideas that can transform a space. Needless to say, these new sliding wall systems help make any space look like a show loft. Jennifer Post, a Manhattan designer who works the contemporary all-white vein with a vengeance, was an instant convert. "From a Tudor in Greenwich to a prewar on Park, if you're going to get rid of the Aubisson rug, the heavy drapes and the traditional décor in order to go clean and feel the light and space, this is the way to go," Ms. Post said. She has already installed the Italian-made wall systems in five residential projects, as well as in her own apartment on Columbus Avenue. Before she made the discovery, Ms. Post was forced to devise her own version -- traditional doors with glass panels. The demand was great, she said, for doors that didn't block the free flow of space in modern apartments. "Let's face it, families don't all sit together in one room anymore," Ms. Post said. "Someone's in the kitchen cooking; the kids are doing their homework in the family room. Rooms have all become multipurpose, and they all need to be connected. And yet for resale, apartments still have to have separate rooms." She found that the chief advantage of the panel system, which typically comes in clear or translucent glass, is that they "add an architectural edge while still creating the illusion of expanding space," Ms. Post said. Standard room dividers, she added, "are so tacky." Ms. Post has installed them in a number of ways, from a single panel to close off a kitchen to four panels that divide her home office from the living room. The four-panel combination, with one fixed to the wall and three floating, can be rearranged to entirely seal or partially reveal. For a small Manhattan apartment, Ms. Post is planning to knock out the wall separating two bedrooms and insert a wall system. The couple who own the place use the second bedroom only once or twice a year, when a mother visits; it will be furnished with a leather sofa bed and a desk. Otherwise, they will leave the panels open to create their master suite. "If I put in old-fashioned doors, you would always have this sense that you were leaving one room to enter another," Ms. Post said .. At another apartment belonging to a couple with two small children, Ms. Post located the sliding walls between the living room and the family room. "I use them constantly," Jenny Symonds, the client, said. "They are so sheer, they make the apartment loftlike without losing any sense of privacy." There are at least three Italian companies that sell the aluminum-and-glass wall systems in New York. One of them is the Tre-Più Pavilion, and Ms. Post was introduced to it by the Italian manufacturer Poliform, which is represented in New York by Nova Studio International. The Tre-Più Pavilion was designed by Antonio Citterio, the Clark Kent of Italian design, whose subtle way of making modern furniture a tad more sensual has been a huge success in attracting Americans to Italian high design. Since the Tre-Più Pavilion was introduced here 18 months ago, more than $1 million worth of panel systems have been sold, said Cinzia Fama-Agnolucci, the vice president of sales and marketing. "It sold basically right off the pages of our catalog without even being installed in our showroom," she added. Their appeal, Ms. Fama-Agnolucci said, besides tapping into the contemporary look of the moment, is that they do not require a track in the floor, but hang from an overhead track. The track can be attached within an opening or mounted in front of one. When used as a pocket door, the panels do not require having a casement box embedded within the wall, she said. The average cost, Ms. Fama-Agnolucci added, starts at $1,500 for a panel two to four feet wide. The maximum height is 10 feet. One thing to note: the doors do not lock. Ms. Post added that she had paid $1,800 to $11,000 for Tre-Più wall systems, depending on the number of panels. Her own combination of four panels to cover a nine-foot opening cost about $8,800. Representatives for Tre-Più will take orders from both designers and individuals. Design services are offered and include taking proper measurements and providing an installer. The Tre-Più Pavilion system is available at Nova Studio International, at the Architects and Designers Building, 150 East 58th Street. Interni, in the same building, distributes the Lema Stile wall system. And the Rimadesio Siparium system is at the Domus Design Collection, 215 East 58th Street. Delivery for these systems takes two to four months.