Looking for inspiration for LIBRARY / OFFICE room
I’ve got a brand new room that is 11′ x 13′ by 8′ high. It’s the library/office room in my house. I am looking for inspiration to build up this room. I searched high and low on Google images, wood working websites, Knots forums and galleries, and still came up with nothing. I am tired of the same old expected layout of “cabinets on bottom, shelves on top, with crown mouldings at ceiling” designs. I want a wow factor that makes it a challenging wood working project (not Victorian or wood carving challenge, but more than just installing cabinets and shelves). Does anyone have suggestions on where I can find some inspiration sources for what I am looking for? I would prefer a simple design like Japanese with simple zen-like accents that breaks the co-planar rectangular look.
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inspiration
Start by building a massive wall to wall floor to ceiling bookcase with uprights and heavy empty shelves. The shelves and uprights are plumb out at the edges, but as they get closer to the middle they bend and twist, the upper shelves start to bend downward and the lower shelves bend upward. The uprights start to bend inward from both sides toward the middle too. They all converge on one little box of a shelf, only seven inches high and five inches deep and only 5/8ths of an inch wide, and inside this little cell of a shelf sits a Kindle with over three thousand titles in its home storage. The weight of all these words are like a black hole bending the shelves and the uprights, bending time and space itself, drawing in the fabric of the universe and perhaps other universes that only exist in the mind of Brian Green. Even light can't escape from that little shelf, and now you have something, a room, a library, a work of art, a statement for the great unwashed. If you live in NYC they will come and wonder at your genius. Any other place, don't bother.
You could begin with a shoji screen for inspiration. I've attached a few pictures I got from the net that could be used as a design inspiration. I love the clean lines of Asian design and I can see a lot of potential in using the shoji as a starting point in designing a library.
As accents I'd consider any number of Japanese shrines like the Shinto shrine below. You could incorporate components from the shrine in your design.
Then you can finish it off with a Bonsai tree or a wooden Buddha statue. Just make sure you have that special place included in your design! :)
Let us know how it goes!
I like this idea. Picture Shoji2BScreen could work if not a whole lot of books were involved, perhaps books and art objects. What if a rice paper like screen covered the entire wall with a light source behind it and the horiz and vert elements were shelves instead of dividers (I don't know what they are called in shoji terms). I think the soft back-lit effect would be beautiful. My mind set last nite when I got carried away with black holes was based on the fact that I have thousands and thousands of books and am running out of room, to the extent that that now I am using a Kindle for my newspapers and new books.
Yeah, I liked that pic too for bookshelf inspiration.
Your black hole idea was great. Very imaginative!
I'm working on a Japanese themed dining room light fixture right now for a customer. He said after I finish that he wanted me to design a Japanese themed kitchen. The shoji screen thing has given me some good ideas for his kitchen.
cabinets and shelves
There's always bookshelves on the bottom, and cabinets on the top. ;-)
The cabinets could be visually jostled by making them round, rather than square, picking up some Asian design element in the process. Depending on where the wall breaks (doors, windows) are, you might arrange a series of circular to semi-circular cabinets, representing a setting sun sequence.
Getting serious...
I always thought that the beauty was in the books themselves.
inspiration
A Sea Cap't cabin mock up was one of my better challenges.
The Greene and Greene bug has got me here of late. Just did a kitchen inspired by them.
Japanes joinery is always a challenge, especially when it's accentuated or featured.
I can see a large japanese garden gate - floor to ceiling - with books and such in it.
Flanked by an eastern style trellis deep enough to house a few wooden boxes or drawers
Drawer or box hardware with just enough oriental flare to bring it all together.
I have an 18 x 16 library upstairs and I was faced with the same question you have:
what to do with it.
I decided to turn it into a Tuscan/Leonardo da Vinci's lab, office, library, painting studio (I paint in oils). So the woodworking/purchasing I did was to build period objects for things like bookshelves, painting tables, desk, computer armoire to hide the high tech. Easels, for both the canvases and the two LCD screens on the computer. Period boxes for wastepaper baskets. Wrought iron chandeliers. I also replaced the window mouldings with wider boards painted with sand/paint to simulate stone. Faux painting finish on the walls to simulate sandstone and marble. Stuff like that.
Whatever you decide upon, you might spend just as much time with curtains, paint, fixtures and wall decoration as you will with woodworking.
WOW !
Do we get to see pictures?
The da Vinci Room
I have a few photos while it was mid-decoration:
Computer has been down so I just got on. Very impressive.
Interesting decor
But, no flying machine hanging from the ceiling? ;-)
Love the desk.
No flying machine
hahahahaa I looked for one and did find a kit that was pretty accurate and impressive.
it was also pretty expensive. Il Volo instrumentale has one for $129.95.
Would be nice though.
Thanks to all for the compliments.
P.S.....
Observant viewers will notice the books "...For Dummies" in the bookshelves.
Suffice it to say - I'm no Leonardo ;)
on being Leonardo
"I'm no Leonardo"
Perhaps, but you veni'ed, you vidi'ed, and you vici'ed the space.
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