We just can’t get enough of innovative Dutch design here at Inhabitat and here’s one more great furniture design to add to our catalog. Libraries all over The Netherlands have suddenly found it essential to stock up on Daan Roosegaarde’s Variant shelves. Deftly hand-constructed out of recycled cardboard, the curious constructions were initially conceived at AKI art academy in Enschede where Roosegaarde studied sculpture. The Rotterdam-based designer soon found himself starting up a production line overnight after library bigwigs got whiff of his class project.
Having also earned his stripes in architecture at the prestigious Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, Daan Roosegaarde is immensely interested in integrating functional sculpture into banal, everyday environments. The Variant shelf, aptly named because each edition is uniquely designed and hand-assembled by Roosegaarde, features a cosy enclosure which allows readers to remain tucked away in their own private little universe while being cocooned by a tower of books. As a teenager, Roosegaarde worked and slept in a used bookstore. In a sense, the Variant shelf is his way of recreating the experience in which one finds solace in the intimate security of a few musky volumes.
+Variant Shelf
+Studio Roosegarde
nice, looks light and good to recycle as well! Seems like a new rise of furniture to me.
Wonder how many books they’ll hold before buckling? I suspect empty shelves … but they’re nice to look at…
I’d like to learn more about this construction technique. It looks as if the layers of cardboard strips are glued together and then the faces are covered with something like formica. Are the cardboard shapes given a final cut with a bandsaw? Any suggestions for websites that might give instructions? Thanks.
I could imagine some of those in my home. They are incredible!
Dear friends,
i just checked the website studioroosegaarde.net
all information about fabrication etc. is available here
By the way, the variants are for sale!
contact them and they will reply…..
best,
grada
[...] I often look over at the innovative, creative and sometimes wacky designs over at the Inhabitat site. Recently they posted about Dutch libraries using what is called Variant shelving for books. From the pictures it looks like they primarily are using the shelves for browsery areas and not to replace regular shelves and well…it looks cool. They are made of recycled cardboard and look very sculptural. The designer Daan Roosegaarde has both an architecture and sculpture background and it shows in his work. [...]
These shelves look pretty amazing in the flesh! I saw one in a library in Deventer, The Netherlands and it totally blew me away. The variant shelf really stood out against the rest of the usual boring library backdrop. Daan Roosegaarde’s other work looks totally different from this…a lot of interactive robotic stuff mixing sculpture and architecture.
In a way it is a densifying of bookstorage- bookflats! cant wait to see these things popping up in suburbia….
Obviously these cocoons will enhance the reading pleasure for sure! Are they available anywhere outside the netherlands? best, Fred.