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April, 2007
Shelving The Matter by Renée Labbé with May Globus
new bookcases blend function and fashion..
Each season it seems the blurry lines between fashion trends, product design and street influence get fuzzier and fuzzier. The modern day consumer now seeks a specific blend of each that speaks to their lives in just the right way. Mix that with an increased interest in art, (the growing popularity of Art Basel Miami, gallery openings and websites such as Wooster Collective) today’s consumers are becoming more design-intelligent each year.

A home accessory as simple and practical as the bookshelf has taken on a whole new meaning. Several designers - having embraced the fashion-meets-function consumer ideal - are creating bookshelves that not only serve its primary function of organizing and displaying coveted objects, but also speak to the art & fashion trends currently dominating design.

Design Within Reach (DWR) houses the BeeBoard Storage created by Piet Boon, an architect who masterminded mobile housing for refugee populations. Using the same building material, he created ecologically low impact shelving from BeeBoard, layered and exposed cardboard with an inner honeycomb structure that is fused together with industrial adhesive. Visually and from afar, the bookshelf appears dense and heavy – like hollow concrete blocks – until closer inspection reveals it’s delicate (yet sturdy) design.

Roche Bobois has tapped into the universal feeling of being one with nature and bringing the outdoors indoors with an eco-friendly furniture series that features the Legend bookcase. Here, the bookshelf visuals directly reflect the material it is made from. Solid Bourgagne oak frames and staggered shelves are crafted into a tree branch-like unit that pays homage to the great outdoors. Being an environmentally-conscious piece, designer Christophe Delcourt fits right in with the current "green" consumer revolution.

Marc Newson has crafted a bookshelf that doubles as organic sculpture. The piece -- machine cut from a single block of carrera marble and hand finished -- is based on the very mathematical and honey comb-shaped Voronoi structure. Scientifically-based yet artistically credible, the Voronoi shelf seems to be commenting on the continuous blending of the creative left side and systematic right side of the brain as well as the influence of biomimetics on design.

	Shelflife by Charles Trevelyan is the ideal marriage of architectural form and every-day function. There is an off-beat aesthetic (read: leaning tower of Pisa) to the bookcase, made by the downward slant of some of the shelves. However, the neatly fitting chair and stool transform the bookcase into a modular library space, ideal for small urban condos.

This quintet of cubes by Malagana Design -- stacked upon each other at single angled points -- is reminiscent of the teetering style of architecture Rem Kollhass based his design of the Seattle Public Library on. The perfect equilibrium between the fun, the practical and the necessary, this shelf adds character to your literary collections. The Tetrad bookshelf by Brave Space Design is an homage to old school Nintendo gamers who have gone the urban professional route. The Tetrad bookshelf is composed of four geometrically shaped squares, all of which connect by at least one side and whose edges are beveled away from the interior surface. This results in a reversible, interchangeable bookshelf that mimics the game of Tetris with its shifting optics and infinite stacking configurations.

Horm displays the riddled bookshelf from award-winning architect Steve Holl. Made of matte copper varnished in vegetable oil, this unit is intricately laser-etched and riddled throughout much of its surface, an unlikely hybrid between creative art and methodic industrial. Angles planes cut through the front of the unit, giving it another visual dimension. Holl's bookshelf (which can also serve as a table) is a perfect example of functional art. Bookcases, like so many other home accessory pieces of late, are no longer function-focused. They must also meet trend criteria, be visually stimulating, and come with added bonuses that address lifestyle and sustainability demands.

Posted by: Renée Labbé

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