tomado

andy beach, of the excellent reference library, pointed me to the dutch tomado system.

hungarian bookshelves

apparently designed by an unnamed hungarian physicist, a good home project courtesy of corey at baltimore rowhouse (see comments under "supersystem" below). plans here.

porro bibliotech

modular often means metal, but piero lissoni is a master at designing clean and modern shelving from wood. this system for porro proves the point.

ladderax

always on the lookout for good, flexible systems, i recently came across
ladderax unit furniture. it was designed by robert heal and produced by staples & co. in the 60's. the following is from material cultures:


"The Ladderax System consists of a number of upright ladders, supporting shelves and cabinets. These are very simply fixed by resting on steel support rods, hooked on to the rungs of the ladders. They fit snugly into grooves under the shelves and cabinets. This allows the system to be very easily assembled and… gives the utmost flexibility. Ladderax does not require any permanent fixing to a wall, because it self-supports. Ladderax is furniture you can move about and rearrange as easily as you can change your mind."

already have a ladderax system (or any midcentury classic, for that matter)? get spare parts here.


see also.

supersystem

supersystem shelving by tom kühne comes in wood and aluminum. a nice simple construction, but larger books hanging off the edge might make me want to kill myself. still, it seems like good inspiration for a home project.

books in new york

while i'll still be posting to books at home, i've also started a new blog/project. you can follow its humble beginnings here.
(pictured above is three lives & co. in new york city)

hirsh industries

last august, i posted the personal library my good friend Abby Low (see top picture above). well, about a month ago her home was given the full treatment on design*sponge. many of the comments on the design*sponge post revolved around where abby got her bookshelves. abby got them from a local hardware store, but an intrepid web researcher found them supplied at walmart, where they were sold at a significant discount to most other suppliers. above are shown two easily found colorways, although I have also seen them in person with black with black shelves. These are a good, very inexpensive solution. they require no tools, the parts themselves are extremely lightweight (in fact so lightweight, one might worry about stability, but they are very stable), and they are easily adjustable. they are quite deep however, and not stackable. a shallower, stackable version of these might be the ultimate cheap bookshelf solution.