Bookworms know that it isn’t easy to live a mobile life with a massive book collection. If you’re not quite ready to donate excess texts or replace them with electronic versions, David Garcia Studio offers an innovative solution: Archive II, a circular bookshelf propelled by walking that is currently on exhibition at Denmark’s University of Roskilde Main Library.
The bookshelf isn’t ideal for long trips, but we can’t think of a better solution if you need to, say, move down the street. According to Garcia, “The average reader can read about 240 words per minute. A 300 page book normally takes 9 hours to read, non stop. I you read while you walk, you can read a book in about 43 kilometers. If you read and walk, watch out for traffic.”
In the above photo you can also see Garcia’s Archive I, a see saw-like “weight balance library” featuring a chair that elevates in response to the weight of books on the shelves.
Via Treehugger
I haven,t seen anything like that since the Irvive Allen sifi’s of the 60′s. About a year ago in preparation of my retirement, I hired a temp to come into my office and one by one, scaned my books into jpg.s and then dropped them onto SD cards and data data
Fantastic way to get exercise and read at the same time, but where is the cup and snack holder?
It’s a great space saver! But a little too futuristic for my taste.
Fucking awesome!
[...] The form of the new structure will be positioned on an intersecting axis, with radiating points that give reference to the city’s four famed landmarks — the Abbaye-Aux-Dames, the Abbaye-Aux-Hommes’, the central train station, and a key site set to host a new major city redevelopment plan. The intersection of the two blocks will also allow for optimized circulation and an intimate intermingling between the reading rooms, multi-disciplinary collections and the patrons of the library themselves. [...]
Your design is beautiful. I like it all.