Recycling Paperbacks as Partitions

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Recycling Paperbacks as Partitions

Diane spotted this interesting idea from London designer Lucy Norman, who writes:

There is currently no infrastructure set up to recycle the paper from books because the paper is low grade and the glue on the spine must be removed. The Paperback Partition is made from this waste, creating an aesthetically pleasing and interesting divide in a room. It provides both good heat insulation, and acoustic insulation. Research showed that most people felt that books as objects were beautiful and they enjoyed their solidness, colour and texture, which the partition shows off.

I like it as a permanent or semi-permanent addition for an appropriately “bookish” space. I have two comments:

  1. Obviously, it’s going to be heavy, and hard to move. But then, heavy may have advantages: thermal and acoustic insulation are mentioned. Stacks of books probably make for pretty good low-cost ballistic protection, too.
  2. I think horizontal stacking is preferable for this use, as shown in the first image, so no one gets confused and thinks they’re looking at an actual bookshelf and/or possibly tries to remove a book from the “shelf” arrangement.

[via CRAFT]

More:
Top 10: Shelves and Shelving

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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