I\'m using Angular 2 Material sidenav in my project this way:
You want to declare a ViewChild in your controller that references the MdSidenav inside your component, like this:
// Sidemenu
@ViewChild('start') sidenav: MdSidenav;
where start is the name of the component you want to reference, in this case the sidenav.
Next you can call methods on that sidenav, like this.sidenav.toggle() inside your controller's functions.
https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/cookbook/component-communication.html#!#parent-to-view-child