Panoramic portraits of American libraries

American photographer Thomas R Schiff uses a panoramic camera to capture epic pictures of libraries across the US. The Library Book, published by Aperture, features buildings across the country from the earliest institutions to modernist architecture, tracing the evolution of the library as central to American culture. It is accompanied by an exhibition at the Aperture Foundation in New York City until 20 April.

Pictured: George Peabody Library, Baltimore (top), Fredrick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (bottom)

The Guardian

Library shaft climbable bookcase

 

Located in a converted warehouse in downtown Calgary, the client’s loft had an unused space that was once part of the building’s industrial elevator shaft. Taking advantage of the room’s high ceilings and small footprint, the space was adapted into a climbable library and music studio. The verticality of the room prompted the design of a climbable shelving system that playfully and efficiently uses minimal floor area while providing ample storage and display space. The millwork wall has handholds and foot tabs integrated into the structure to facilitate climbing and make fetching a book fun. 

Studio North

Help stock donkey-drawn libraries in Somalia

Africa Educational Trust is looking to raise £3,000 to allow them to transport 10,000 books donated by Book Aid to 66 libraries, including Donkey Drawn Libraries, across Somalia.
Lots more details at Playing by the Book

Frame book storage

Steel and wood and fixed wire in frame.
NAM

Hoja bookcase

Hoja is a bookcase in poplar plywood that allows you to hold about 40 books in a small space. The product dimensions are 255x225x790 mm​​. The object is assembled without screws or bolts, you'll only need a hammer to fix the joints.
Alessio Rocchi

Sitting with Jane: Jane Austen book benches

Sitting With Jane is a unique public art trail to celebrate Jane Austen’s connections with Basingstoke and her birthplace, Steventon, and forms part of a global commemoration of her life in 2017, the 200th anniversary of her death. Sitting with Jane is a public art trail made up of 24 ‘BookBenches’ in and around Basingstoke, each uniquely designed and painted by a professional artist with their personal interpretation of a Jane Austen theme. The trail will link together locations – all with free public access. It will be in place between June and September j2017 and will be accompanied by a free to download app and a trail guide. After, the benches will all be auctioned in aid of Ark Cancer Centre Charity,to leave a valuable lasting legacy in the region. Sitting With Jane is part of the Hampshire Cultural Trust’s celebration of Jane Austen’s life in Hampshire.
Sitting with Jane

Sitting with Jane - Artist Video from Face TV on Vimeo.

Air conditioning library: Shu Xiang

Chinese cultural thinking appreciates the smell of books as an expression of respect for knowledge. It is a harmonic relation between a library and airflow.
Sushant Passi

Ghost libraries

As we continue to fight to save our local public library which turned 80 years old last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the lifecycle of libraries and how they change over time, and what happens when they’re gone. Among other things, this has led me to visit several “ghost” libraries – buildings originally built as libraries, but which no longer house libraries, either because they’ve been moved to new buildings or simply because the library has been closed and lost entirely to its community. Hunting for these “ghosts” has been meditative and moving. I can’t help but wonder what books were read and borrowed, what lives were changed as a result of these former libraries.
Playing by the Book 

Bookshelf House

Stepped bookshelves help to divide and characterise this house just outside of Paris. We designed the interior for a family of five, who were enamoured with the room-length bookshelf at a friend’s house, where they were staying during the remodelling. We made the element a feature of the home, which we called Bookshelf House. As well as providing a place to display books, the beech wood shelves act as stair bannisters room dividers and general storage within the three-storey property. Rather than flat shelves, we designed the bookcases to look like stacked boxes. The largest unit extends from the first floor to the mezzanine, serving as the main bookshelf in the living room as well as a bannister on one side of the stairs. Its stepped top continues on the mezzanine level, where it serves as a storage cabinet. The main shelf is reflected by a large mirror on the opposite side of the living room, making books a dominant feature of the space from almost any angle.
Andrea Mosca

Home Cafés, China

The Home Café chain incorporates various concept versions to offer spaces to breathe in heavily polluted areas of China. Steel bars are upcycled to become a main interior design feature. The steel bars create a series of cubic frameworks, which can be combined to shelves of different sizes. Boxes of plants, books, and lights on different levels create various densities for the interior.
Penda

Flexile bookshelf

Flexile is a flat-pack bookshelf which utilizes polyester textile for personalization. Flexile can be mounted in as many different ways as the user imagines.
Aybars Şenyıldız

Bookcase made out of books

Avelak

Squama bookcase

Dmitry Kozinenko

Horizontal bookcase

Bookcase is a bookshelf conceived horizontally, where books can be arrange flat. The wooden structure suggests the simple shape of a tree trunk cut into planks. This superposition principle and this visual effect of « empty and full » changes our perception of the piece depending of our view angle. The furniture is designed as an island for readers which can be placed in the middle of a living room. With its two front sides and the upper plank at seat height, Bookcase combines the function of bookshelf, console and bench.
AC/AL

Medieval shelfies

The appreciation of the aesthetic value of books and bookcases is not just a modern day phenomenon. Medieval manuscripts contain many images which depict books being stored in various styles of bookcases and shelves. Certain physical features of manuscripts themselves can also suggest how books were stored to be both visually attractive and accessible for the reader.
More at Medieval manuscripts blog/The British Library

Ice Library of Wonders

The hopes and dreams of 1,000 people have been carved into massive blocks of ice for a new tourist attraction near the shore of Russia's Lake Baikal, in Siberia. "Last year we announced we would create the Ice Library of Wonders, and asked people to send us their dreams and wishes," local tourism chief and ice librarian Maxim Khvostishkov told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. The first 1,000 suggestions have been etched onto the huge ice blocks, which have been arranged to form a translucent labyrinth that visitors can wander through and browse.
BBC

Slide bookshelf

Pedro Sousa

Donald Trump's bookshelf

A contact sends along a picture of a bookcase in what's called the Old State Department Library in the EEOB. It's the first thing you see pic.twitter.com/o4hNMkyDJr

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) January 26, 2017

In Love with Parthenon bookcase

The first of a series of design pieces conceived to recall, through their shapes, the history of architecture starting from the layouts of the most famous buildings. With In Love with Parthenon the three-dimensional development of the temple plant, generates points of support and interlocking for books and magazines, turning architecture into bookcase.
Irene Girelli

Curio bookshelf

Design inspired by a crumpled paper ball.
Abdul Salam P K