stacking crates rafael gómez - moriana
woodwork efficiency packing moving building
This question arose some years ago in the middle of relocating from one Winnipeg apartment to another. If only I had a bookcase that disassembled into smaller carrying crates during a move; crates which could then be reassembled into a bookcase again at destination, their content remaining unperturbed throughout. The idea stuck in my head long after my move. No such system seemed to be commercially available at the time and the only thing that came remotely close was the milk crate, many of which I already used for storing 12” LPs. But they were unstable when turned sideways and stacked into a shelving system open at the front. Besides, milk crates remind me too much of being a teenage stoner in the 1970s. Wooden wine crates? Too small and flimsy. There was no choice but to design and fabricate my own system. · The design idea was for a bookcase made of stacked crates turned sideways but that doesn’t look like it’s made of crates. It would help if the crates were elongated as opposed to squarish, were made of a strong material and that they fit together without gaps. If the crates are too large, they become too heavy to carry; if too small, then book size is too limited. Should they be different sizes? Unlike LPs or CDs, there is no standard book size, but there’s a certain beauty in standardisation and modularity: I’m the type who likes early Lego which came in only a handful of sizes and colours, not the current Lego, which is little different from putting together a model airplane kit. In any case, to avoid making an arbitrary decision regarding a standard crate size, I let the standard dimensions of the material I would use determine the outcome. What material to use? I chose high-quality birch plywood 1/2” (12 mm) thick, for reasons both structural and aesthetic. Birch is a hardwood so it’s strong and plywood made with it has thin plies and no knots, so edges are elegant and surfaces uniform. Two brands of birch plywood were available: 4’ x 8’ sheets of Apple Ply and 5’ x 5’ Baltic Birch. Since either product is pricey, it would only be used where edges became visible – the four sides of a crate in moving mode. The bottom (i.e. the back when flipped and stacked into a bookcase) could be ordinary plywood as it would hardly be seen.
A library is wonderful to own, except when moving house. Who hasn’t tired of packing books into cardboard boxes and disassembling Billy bookcases only to have to reassemble and reload them again at destination? What if the very same containers could be used to both store as well as relocate a collection of books?
rafael gomez-moriana
30
on site review 40 : the architect’s library :: books, shelves, collections
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