Slovenian studio SoNo Arhitekti has lined a book store in Trieste, Italy, with floor-to-ceiling stacks of shelves in patterns that reference the architecture of a local landmark .
The wooden bookcases with irregularly-sized shelves cover the walls of the 177-square-metre Guide Centre Trieste store, which also features a number of display podiums as properly as a children’s reading corner.
Visitors can take a break on the store’s two sofas, which feature grid-patterned upholstery and wooden side panels that lend readers privacy from nearby guide browsers.
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A counter rests on 3 white bookcases produced from box-like shelves stacked into a row of diamond shapes.
A staircase to the upper amounts of books is accessed and half-concealed by a second set of irregularly shaped bookshelves.
“The visitor is surrounded by books,” mentioned SoNo Arhitekti, which has previously created a three-story Alpine residence with two residence-shaped projecting rooms. “The pattern of the bookshelves and its composition accompanied by interactive displays turn into the central point of the room.”
The guide centre is housed in a 19th-century constructing in Trieste’s Oberdan Square, and has been designed as each a bookshop and a social and cultural centre for the city’s Slovenian local community.
The architects referenced the external diamond brick patterns of the close by Trieste National Hall, designed by architect Max Fabiani in 1902, to produce the geometric varieties of the bookshelves. The practice described the constructing as “a symbol of Slovenian presence in Trieste”, due to its history as the centre of the Slovene minority in the city.
“The proximity of the Oberdan Piazza and Fabiani’s National Hall has encouraged us to look far more closely to the symbolic ties that are essential for the Slovene minority residing in Trieste,” SoNo said.
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“A hint that would only symbolically present itself derives from Fabiani’s masterfully made facade’s decoration,” the architects additional. “The decorative geometric element has been broken down and transformed into a modern day framework, which represents itself in the fundamental pattern of the bookshelves.”
Mexican company Taller 6A also enclosed visitors in bookshelves, in a library renovation in Mexico city that set up hundreds of wooden boxes on the walls, ceilings, and even underneath the glass floors.
Photography is by Žiga Lovšin.
