Year_2010
Dimension_200x270 cm – depth 30 cm
Materials_gluelam wood, perspex
Service_Preliminary project, executive project, construction
Conceived for an apartment at Residenza Principessa Clotilde in Milan, this home library assumes the task of illuminating the surrounding reading area by twentyone lights box made up of opaline perspex.
These luminescent “books” hide the structure that supports the shelves and permits to have a free standing structure, easy to dismantle and recompose elsewhere.
The bookshelf is therefore a piece of architecture: a facade sector or the whole prospect of a building on 1:10 scale.
The irregular layout of the lightboxes is in subtle analogy with the facade of the building in which the apartment is located, a splendid example of Milanese modernism designed by Asnago e Vender in 1963. There a travertine facade is chiselled by large windows, generally aligned on a regular pattern, sometimes discarded to create powerfully graphic exceptions.
The lightboxes arrangement has a certain degree of indeterminacy: they can be positioned as desired along the shelves, dividing the library into thematic areas.
Every bookshelf is potentially a unique piece, a design object to be completed by its user.
The 21 opaline lightboxes are made of a single 3 mm sheet of perpex, engraved and bent in U shape. Inside it are placed 21 fluorescent lamps 8W cool white (330 lumens – 4000 kelvin)
The 8 horizontal shelves are made of 30mm thick lamellar beech wood, finished with black paint.
