Project Overview

A unique, unconventional bookshelf design created to stylise a classic book. The Book Shelf represents an open book standing up, symbolising everything a book encompasses: stories, adventures, knowledge, immersion, dreams,... The bookshelf comprises of a dark brown recycled mahogany cover, chiseled sides to represent the pages as well as two page-like sides pained in milk paint to give it the authentic touch. The spine is elastic and the two sides are connected with a flexible hinge so that the angle of the open book is adjustable to fit in to any type of corner. Each side of the book shelf is 800mm wide and 140mm high and has three shelfs each.

Organisation

Aline Dürr

Team

Aline Dürr is a young European Interior Designer with a corporate background and a newcomer to the design industry with a deep passion for colour, lighting and all types of interiors. Aline moved to Sydney from Germany one year ago realising the huge cultural diversity and embarked on re-educating herself with this new and exciting world changing careers towards where her passion lies. Aline brings work and life experience from across Europe, the USA and Canada to Australia. In addition to her work as Design Manager, she is studying and graduating from the International School of Colour and Design this year. The course at ISCD broadened her understanding of colour and design enormously, opening her eyes for great design ideas from simple objects by exploring their individual depth, sophistication and beauty.


Donald Small is the Managing Director of Cartoon Constructions and a carpenter who has done a lot of work which is beyond the scope of tract housing. Don has created amazing joinery work which fits into the category of 'folly building': Gothic gates, replicas of the bridges of sighs appearing to float over water,... you name it. Whatever design people come up with, Don can draw upon many years of experience and an impressive knowledge of materials and can execute it to an amazingly sophisticated and high standard. Don dedicates a lot of time and passion to all of his works and has the gift of creativity and imagination which gives his furniture pieces the special touch.

Project Brief

The intention of the Book Shelf design is to bring to life a everyday object well-liked by everyone in form of a new practical design that symbolises something greater than the object itself. Playing with the roles of form and fuction and adding an element of surprise, the super-sized book creates a library of stories, adventures, knowledge and fairytales. It represents a door into your own imagination and creativity, reproducing the feeling of immersion in itself. The book as a bookshelf offers a blank canvas to be filled with stories and knowledge, encouraging your mind to break free of the everyday. It is ‚just’ a bookshelf but it creates a focal point by standing out as a centerpiece in its own right without need for further decoration. While the design is simple and modern to fit into any contemporary or minimalistic home or interior, it brings along a sense of romanticism and cosiness.

Project Innovation / Need

The idea was to give an everyday object that has existed for centuries a new, broader function through an innovative furniture design. The market consists of more and more people who wish to have products that express their personalities and values rather than a mass-product off the shelf. People are seeking a simpler, calmer life without hassles and this is being reflected in their surroundings. People want less clutter in the home, editing down personal effects to the essential and beautiful by possessing objects with a personal meaning and an emphasis on uniqueness. A book can be a very personal and emotional object and by recreating that feeling, the Book Shelf mixes the traditional and the contemporary becoming a blank canvas for people's projections and a very versatile and individual furniture piece. It is a reminiscence of a classic design, embodied within a contemporary form and fits seamlessly into the modern, stylish homes of today. In a broader sense it is the unison of the past and the present and turns an everyday object into something special.

Design Challenge

The challenge was to create something new and unique which is at the same time practical as well as personal and interesting. By building a bookshelf from a book, my intention was to recreate the emotion of reading in all its broadest extensions in an everyday object while keeping the design timeless and versatile. The Book Shelf had to be simple in the design and stylised to the right extend in order to fit into any modern and contemporary space without looking tacky or childish. Therefore the elements representing the book (cover, pages, ...) and the colours used are kept to a necessary and balanced minimum.
In terms of the materials, they had to be light but stable. The use of MDF combined with laminated veneer lumber and bamboo gives the shelf the necessary strenght while being light enough to move the shelf around whenever it needs to be moved. In order not to be too bulky, I designed a flexible hinge connecting the two ‚pages’ making it even easier to transport or move the bookshelf.

Sustainability

My approach was to source everything the bookshelf is made of locally and to only use recycled or green materials. The Book Shelf is made of MDF, laminated veneer lumber (LVL) as well as recycled mahogany, bamboo, milk paint and a variety of sustainable glues and fixings.

MDF is made from waste saw dust that comes from wood mills and wood thinning's which are small trees and bits that are not suitable for making planks.
LVL is a high-strength engineered wood product used primarily for structural applications comparable in strength to solid timber, concrete and steel. It provides a green and sustainable building material, delivering high structural reliability.
The bamboo is hardy and durable and a renewable resource which helps deter harvesting of old-growth forests for wood products.
Milk paint is organic, non-toxic, biodegradable and completely environmentally safe. It is the oldest type of paint in the world and cave drawings made thousands of years ago were made with that simple composition of milk, lime and earth pigments.