Collection by Olivia Martin
Bookshelves for All Spaces
Whether you have a large or small space, these bookshelves will fit right in.
In 1940, architect Franco Albini made a single model of his ship’s rigging-like Veliero bookcase for his Milan home—where it eventually collapsed. Sixty-six years later, Cassina fabricated the shelves in a re-creation of Albini’s study for the Renzo Piano-curated Zero Gravity exhibition. Again: poor stability. But Cassina, which has committed to keeping alive the work of select master architects in the form of its I Maestri collection, did not give up. Instead, it embarked on an epic five-year R&D effort that would lead to the product’s launch in April 2012.
Multi-functional furniture makes small (and not-so-small) spaces a little more livable. Need a place to sit, set your coffee, or house your collection of paperbacks? The Platone unit by Jeff Miller is a bench, bookcase, and coffee table together as one. The larger sections are made of solid or moka ash, shown here with the smaller square—Plato—which is sculpted from a single block of marble.