bookshelves, reading and places to read ivan hernandez - quintela
building organising
reading thinking sitting
books: a relationship that goes beyond reading them
I can’t remember how I used to organise my books before I decided to build particular bookshelves to keep them in. I guess they were just everywhere, piled next to my bed, stacked on top of my working table, leaning on top of any window ledge. I first built a bookshelf unit for my literature books, since most of my architecture and art books I could keep at my studio. I wanted a light-looking set of shelves with a Japanese feel to them and where it would be apparent how it was all assembled. As soon as I started putting books on shelves, all the lightness was gone from the carefully designed unit (one important lesson learned which also applies to architecture: most of the details you obsessively over-design will soon move to the background to give way to everyday life itself). All one could see once all my books were in place was that colourful pattern of different thickness of lines that the sides of books generate. The thing that broke that vertical pattern resulted from a design mistake – I failed to include an end support to each shelf, so books would topple and fall – so I had to put the end books horizontally to act as bookends. Now to the organisation of the books by shelves. On the top shelf, I keep my favourite genres: diaries, biographies and correspondences. I keep acquiring these kinds of books so they no longer fit within that shelf. For now, the solution has been to keep stacking them on the horizontal end piles until they are no longer stable. At that point I need to consider whether they deserve a second shelf or if they will just spill into other sections where I still have space to add more books. On the second shelf I keep American literature. I am not sure if is because I studied in the United States but in terms of geography, it is the biggest section I own. The third shelf belongs to European literature – mostly British, Irish, French, Italian and Russian literature but one could find a couple of books by Norwegian, Polish, Czech and German authors. As for Spanish and Portuguese literature, I have placed these on the bottom shelf, along with Latin American, Indian and African literature. I know it makes no sense to not place them in the European shelf but books on
the bottom shelf are all in Spanish, (books on the other two shelves are mostly in English) and I must admit I have less of them so I deduced that the nearness-of-language was reason enough for Spanish and Portuguese literature to jump the ocean and join the other continents. The fourth shelf is half-filled with Literature from the Orient, mostly from Japan and the rest of the shelf has boxes, sketchbooks and other things that should not be there but I have not found a place for them. The fifth shelf is for poetry, regardless of where it is from. Here I have space for more books, which I definitely would like to acquire as I am beginning to be more and more interested in the Japanese restrictive poetry of Haiku. On the rest of the shelf I have unread books laid horizontally to remind myself to get to them soon. On the ends, one category might spill into another if there is no longer room in its section and the other category does not have enough to fill the entire shelf so there goes any sense of order.
Ivan Hernandez Quintela
40
on site review 40 : the architect’s library :: books, shelves, collections
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator