Cool Things Made of Books (or more uses for unwanted Dan Brown Books)

Books make ideal building blocks. Various shapes and sizes, and of course a solid object.

Given how many are unwanted (I have written here before about using Dan Brown books to create useful household items), you would think that more people would use them to build stuff.

People like the Swan and Edgar pub in London, which has built its bar out of books:

Incidentally, I really wanted to also include a photo of the loos at the Swan and Edgar, which are tiled completely with Scrabble tiles. Alas, no photos to be found. Go, its fun.

Or you could go with something a little more ambitious and build a whole building out of books. Matej Kren’s installation at the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (MAMbo) takes things to a whole new level.

You can see more photos here.

Or this installation, the Octagonal Book building.

“Architecture is knowledge, history, research and trend. This is literally evident in Book Cell, an octagonal building made entirely from books that was installed in the Modern Art Center in Lisboa. Slovakian artist Matej Kren built an octagonal framework, filled it with books and removed it, leaving a symmetrical, enclosed room of stacked literature.”

You can read more about the Octagonal Book Installation here.

OK, so that was admittedly more of an installation than an actual building. Not so the Kansas State Library. I mean, if you are going to build a building which has books in it, it might as well look like it has books in it.

Posted by Caspar Schlickum 2010