“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991. This room is in Mildred’s Lane, the Pennsylvania artist’s colony that J. Morgan Puett and partner built over many years. Thanks to kellylynnwaters for the photo, which is originally from J. Morgan Puett via pjb.
Why can’t cooperative housing look like this more often? The Avenel Cooperative Housing Project in LA’s Silver Lake neighbourhood, supposedly built either for “a bunch of communists” or for a “group of motion picture cartoonists and their families” (click above for informative Wikipedia article) was affordable when it was built in 1947 and of course is now ridiculously expensive. It was designed by architect Gregory Ain for a group of ten families who each contributed $11,000. Ain built ten three-bedroom units of 960 sq ft (89 sq m), each positioned along a common path. They were meant to be a model for low-cost housing, but these particular units have proven so well-designed and constructed that they’re now too prized to be affordable. Someone needs to copy these, both for their looks and for the fact that though a relatively small square footage for a family, they’re so well-laid out that they apparently feel spacious. See comments here for a possible explanation why. As a plan for affordable urban living these days, it’s unlikely that a single storey would now be considered an efficient use of an expensive urban lot. Or would it? Photos from LA Curbed. See also the LA Times and here.
Yet another 60s DIY project from the The Practical Encyclopedia of Good Decorating and Home Improvement, Greystone Press, 1970. While the bookshelf directly above is cringe-worthy (almost in the so bad it’s good category, but not quite), it could be very mod if it were updated and re-made properly with more attractive materials. One advantage of pole shelving is that unlike wall-mounted shelving (previous post), you can bring it out from the wall and let it function as a room divider. If you do want to place it against a wall, the fact that it is anchored from floor to ceiling means that you don’t have to screw into the wall, either when you’re not allowed to alter the wall in a rental, or when your plaster wall is disintegrating and too weak to support heavy shelves. See some pole-mounted cado-style shelving here. The trick is to figure out how to anchor your poles – once you’ve done that, suspending the shelves is easy and there are many ways to do it. Some Apartment Therapy tips here and we found a blog called Pole Shelving which shows a number of styles and provides many links to tutorials. Below, from Time Life: aluminum poles used as room divider in New York apartment, has three pole shelves held on by clamps. Taken in December 1953 by photographer Peter Stackpole, the bookshelf cost $142.50 at the time and were made by a company called Polecats Inc. Rakks and ISS are two big current suppliers of these systems. But somehow the 50s example has a bit more style.
These staggered, airy midcentury modern arrangements are so much less chichi than the many fancified contemporary bookshelves we see around. For some reason we love this simple, balanced living room belonging to Italian architect Egle Amaldi in the 1960s. The bookshelf – its shape and the way it spans the whole width – is probably the key to the room. It is somewhat reminiscent of Cado shelving, named after Danish designer Poul Cadovius, even though its shelves are longer and it’s missing the characteristic cabinets and other boxy components. (See an excellent example at kitkadesign and below.) Its verticals are visually interesting and objects look particularly good on the syncopated horizontal levels. How hard would this be to DIY? Probably not that hard. More photos of this type of bookcase in the book “The Modern Room” which also features work by Amaldi. People say that the contemporary versions of these are RAKKS and ISS, but we like the simplicity of the one above. Some DIY ideas for Cado shelving and “pole” shelving (where the supports are poles fixed to ceiling and floor, rather than wall-mounted) can be found on the Pole Shelving blog. If you’re in Vancouver, there are a couple of Cado-style units at the moment at Fabulous Finds.
Below, more classic Cado shelving from Flickr.
