November 2012 | Nate Pedersen

Decline of the Book; Rise of the Bookshelf

In the age of eReaders people are buying fewer physical books. Fewer physical books in a home also means fewer bookshelves. The remaining bookshelves are therefore freed from their utilitarian shackles.

So innovative bookshelf design is on the rise. 

Consumers increasingly desire interesting bookshelves to house their smaller, but more important, book collections. Rows of basic, square bookcases are in decline, replaced by sleek, modernist affairs that serve as talking pieces on their own.

Head on over to the TechnoBlog to see five cutting edge example of new bookshelf design.  The blog published a post recently entitled "Top 5 Coolest Bookshelves for Geeks." The profiled bookshelves are indeed very cool, with textual elements and optical illusions included.

Furniture designer Jena Hall explained the trend in a recent interview with Mark Garrison at marketplace.org. "The traditional rectangle bookcase, as one might visualize it, has really evolved into a more decorative piece. Some of them are asymmetrical. They have unusual configuration of shelves. They're not limited to just straight horizontal planks of wood."

One of my personal favorites reuses another everyday object and turns it into a surprising wall piece: The Ladder Bookshelf (made by naturallycre8tive and sold on etsy):

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For more examples of innovative book designs, check out the gallery at Inspiration Feed's "50 Unique and Unconventional Bookcase Designs."