Falzüber I und II

Information

2011

I pride myself to build a piece of furniture from a scribble on a piece of paper to the last polish all by myself. I install it even, if need be. Not this time. René, my Swiss friend, who already commissioned two other pieces – ‘Vorab’, the writing desk, and the daybed ‘rouge&noir’ – asked me to build him two bookshelves for his office. Workhorses, not for displaying books, plain storage, easy to organize. And about 30 stackable file sorters for all his projects he is working on. He gave me the dimensions of the room and the books. He also gave me a caveat: there is already quite a bit wood in his office to deal with: an oak floor, larch for the windows, the windowsill itself is made from beech. Centerpiece is the above mentioned desk on black metal feet with a slate top and the pretty dominant daybed with its glorious red leather. Quite a challenge: be sturdy, don’t compete with the rest of the room and don’t make the office look smaller then it already is.

Here is my solution: I proposed the same square and solid steel bars I had used for the daybed for the structural elements – light and sturdy. For the shelves I imagined bamboo plywood, which is tough and exotic looking to hold its ground next to oak and larch and beech. As a novum I had the whole piece fabricated in Switzerland – all in metric dimensions, of course. I flew to Switzerland, picked up the various parts, assembled the file sorters – I had brought the parts with me in a suitcase – and installed the bookshelves right in place – with a little help of my friends.

20 x 120 x 200 cm and 30 x 180 x 200 cm    steel and bamboo plywood