Book x Furniture = Bookniture February 11, 2015 – Posted in: books in design, Content, product design

The latest bookish gem emanating from Kickstarter is Bookniture, an extremely compact piece of furniture that masquerades as a book when stored. The brainchild of Hong Kong based industrial designer Mike Mak, Bookniture combines the strength of an advanced honeycomb paper structure with the traditional craft of book-binding. Mak was looking for “something different from traditional folding chairs and tables” something that would “look natural and fit in the living environment, comfortable to sit on, invisible when stored” Here’s part of…

Model Bookshop: The new Shonan T-Site bookstore sets the stage for the 21st century January 21, 2015 – Posted in: Bookselling / Collecting, bookshops, Content, Interior Design

Recently I mused about the benefits of putting a bookstore in every mall and wouldn’t you know Japan’s leading entertainment retailer Tsutaya has just hit it out of the park with the opening of their latest store Shonan T-Site, located 30 miles outside of Tokyo. Tsutaya returned to architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham to help create their second retail outlet. Their first venture together, the Daikanyama project, won numerous awards including World’s Best Shopping Center at the World Architecture Festival and the 2013 Grand Prize at Design…

The Ark Booktower December 23, 2014 – Posted in: Books and Art, Conceptual Art, Exhibits, Installation, Interior Design

For the 1:1 – Architects Build Small Spaces exhibition in 2010 the Victoria & Albert Museum invited nineteen architects to submit proposals for structures that examine notions of refuge and retreat. From these nineteen, seven were selected for construction at full-scale and lucky for us one of them was The Ark Booktower by Rintala Eggertsson architects. 6,000 books fill the space and there is a reading space at the core of the 3-story tower. All the spines face…

The World’s First Mobile Library; A ‘Jacobean Kindle’ December 11, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, bookbinding, Content, mobile libraries, product design, Special Collections

The year was 1617. William Hakewill MP commissioned it to give as a gift to a friend. And it just might be the first mobile library. The Jacobean miniature travelling library consisted of 50 gold-tooled vellum-bound miniature books contained in a wooden case that resembled a large folio. Inside there were three shelves for the books. The inside cover was an illuminated table of contents. The subject matter covered history, poetry, theology and philosophy and included works by Cicero, Virgil,…

Change has come to the library: Four architects imagine the Obama presidential library November 22, 2014 – Posted in: books in design, Content, Interior Design, Libraries, Library Architecture

Sketch by Richard Dattner of a potential Obama Presidential Library. As President Barack Obama’s tenure winds down and we mourn the lack of promised change that was to come to America perhaps it is time to look ahead to the future presidential library to be built in his honor. Enter the folks at Guardian US Opinion. They asked four award-winning, firm-founding architects “to sketch and describe their unofficial visions for a possible Obama Presidential Library.…

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