Category: Bookshelf

Liana

I really think this bookshelf is a fine example of minimalist design. It has been designed by the Belgian Pieter Desmijter and produced by the manufacturer and editor of design furniture, Feld.

The bookshelf is called Liana because its design has been inspired by this plant: arising from the wall, curling the books and finally disappearing back  in the wall. It is made from oak with a varnished or stained finish, and you can install it using just two screws.

I’m particularly interested in Liana because the design reduces a bookshelf to a basic form to achieve its function, whilst using minimum material.

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QueB

QueB is the first furniture piece from the young Belgian design collective FARZ, consisting of Anton Boel, Bart Houben and Pieter Neyens.

The simplicity in the design of QueB is strongly reflected in the material – one steel rail and three steel cubes. Simplicity is also found in its flexibility. The boxes can be easily positioned in multiple ways depending on one’s own preference or mood. The rail is tied to the wall in such a way that the screws are invisible, introducing a minimalist aesthetic to the design.

For me, the most successful aspect to this rack is the continual visual interest it can create from one moment to the next by making slight adjustments to the box positions.

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Dancing Squares

Distinguished Japanese design agency Nendo have created the Dancing Squares collection consisting of a series of minimalist furniture pieces based on the concept of motion.

Nendo describes some of the designs:

One part of the bookshelf is frozen in a tumbling cascade, creating variety in the way books can be stacked. The stool’s twist endows it with rich visual play. Lamps roll about but are stable, thanks to their planes, and cast light in many directions. The table leans as though falling away, but maintains its function as a table, and makes objects placed on it seem to sink into its folds and sways.

The sense of motion, or rather dance is achieved through the clever positioning of the planes, resulting in a combating balance. My personal favourite would have to be the square open basket.

Nendo have also recently introduced the Dancing Squares collection to the NTCRI exhibition in Taiwan as a combination piece.

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Trick

Milan based industrial designer Sakura Adachi created Trick, a bookcase which can be transformed into a console table with two chairs.

Adachi, born in Aichi – Japan, studied at the Musashino Art University in Industrial and Craft Design, specializing in woodwork, and moved to London afterward to completed her MA in Industrial Design at Saint Martins College of Art & Design.

Trick is a perfect furniture piece to fulfill your everyday activities in a small environment. Moving both sides of the bookcase from their original positions they become chairs and the center part becomes a table ideal to use for office work and dining.

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Foundation

London-based designer Benjamin Hubert created Foundation, a shelving system inspired by brutalist architecture. The brutalist architecture style flourished from 1950s until 1975 and spawned from the modernist architectural movement.

Just like the characteristic of this style, Foundation has striking repetitive angular geometries. You can also see the influence in the contrast between the industrial materials like the Valchromat shelves (organic coloured wood fibre panels derived from forest waste), the steel metal boxes, and the soft and smooth leather tabs on those boxes.

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Line bookshelves

These elegant bookshelves are nothing more than just two pieces of square, 10mm wide steel tubes. The designer, Yedidia Blonder, is a bibliophile, and he designed the shelves so that the books hold visual precedence over their furniture.

The bookshelves come in four variations: Uno Line, Duo Line, Tre Line, and Quattro Line, and are now offered as a part of the Shlezinka brand.

Blonder designed these as a student at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, Israel. He graduated in 2001, and currently works as the Vice President Product at Commino.

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