Reappropriating anachronistic messaging infrastructure (which are really just props for pedestrian scaled billboards) into something potentially more useful. In this case a community book drop.

Even as they are rendered obsolete by the ubiquity of smartphones, I’m interested in pay phones because they are both anachronistic and quotidian. Relics, they’re dead technology perched on the edge of obsolescence, a skeuomorph hearkening back to a lost shared public space we might no longer have any use for. Something to be nostalgic for, in the way I can’t think about a phone booth without conjuring up images of an old, impatient woman banging on the door to one while I was inside using a calling card to ask for money. And of course they are nuisance, basically pedestrian level billboards that only blight certain neighborhoods (good luck finding a payphone in Tribeca, while there are eight separate phone kiosks on one block between 108th and 109th streets and Columbus Ave). But they can also be a place of opportunity, something to reprogram and somewhere to come together and share a good book with your neighbors.

We told our architect at our very first meeting that one of the most important elements was to integrate our books into the heart and soul of our home. He came up with a brilliant solution which we had never seen before, to build the shelves right into staircases (set into the wall) from top to bottom of house. So essentially "book spines" line the spine of our home. Amy Krouse Rosenthal Architectural Interventions

While many need light-filled rooms for inspiration, he wanted to avoid large windows opening onto a residential neighborhood and sought a cave-like atmosphere to disappear into his work. Subtle light was brought in by other means when the architect built a dome above his client’s desk (which Price describes as similar to the rotunda of the oracle’s temple at Delphi) and filled it with the books he uses the most. Davis whimsically calls the space his “Navajo kiva of knowledge.”

“‘You can tell how serious people are by looking at their books,’” Susan Sontag told Sigrid Nunez, long ago when Nunez was dating Sontag’s son. “She meant not only what books they had on their shelves, but how the books were arranged,” Nunez explains. “Because of her, I arranged my own books by subject and in chronological rather than alphabetical order. I wanted to be serious.” There are many varieties of nerd, but only two real species—the serious and the nonserious—and shelves are a pretty good indication of who is which. “To expose a bookshelf,” Harvard professor Leah Price writes in Unpacking My Library, a recent collection of interviews with writers about the books they own, “is to compose a self.” In Sontag’s case, a very rigorous self. And, of course, that’s just the sort of self someone anxious about his aspirations might shy away from. “A self without a shelf remains cryptic,” Price notes.

After many years of planning and other projects to complete first, we have finally gotten around to my dream of creating a traditional victorian library. When complete, the walls will be wrapped in velvet, drenched in dark leathers and woods, and topped off with an oak wall-to-tall bookcase with a sliding ladder. There will be a globe in the corner that is actually a bar, tufted leather chairs that would be suitable for Gatsby himself, and a record player powered with glass tube amps.

Designer Sallie Trout built shelves in an inaccessible stairwell. She reaches them by using a bosun's chair that is fastened to a chain hoist hanging from the ceiling above.

The most efficient way to build is vertically.
Building vertically saves space as it uses minimal ground square meters. When it comes to interior design, the same rule can be applied. By focusing on height rather than width, efficient storage designs can be created. However, high storage designs can create a new problem because the higher storage parts will be difficult to reach. My Staircase is a shelving unit that combines a bookshelf with a pullout stair system in the bottom three shelves. The shelving unit is 2.6 meters high and the top shelves are accessible by using the bottom shelves as steps for accessing the higher shelves.

After scanning the hoards of chachkis lying on my bedroom floor I printed out life size puzzle pieces and arranged them into this curious thought bubble. Constructed of laser cut mdf, and pink foam, then fiberglassed and coated with molded polysterene. The interior is painted and flocked, with hardwood (dovetailed) drawers, and door. Stands 7 feet’ 6” inches high.

Unistrut, a system of slotted metal channel, framing and tubing that can be connected and interconnected with various nut and bolt fittings to create storage racks, shelving, work tables, support for overhead lighting and a lot more. The parts are industrial quality (steel and/or pre-galvanized steel), but priced to be used everywhere.…You can buy Unistrut fittings online. Channel, the part which is expensive to ship, can be found next to electrical conduit at Home Depot.