Reading Room

“It’s a bit like a ship in a bottle,” says Malibu designer and functional artist Bruce Bolander of the free-standing library he slipped inside the foyer of a contemporary-style home he recently completed in Big Rock. Bolander designed the room-within-a-room to accommodate the owner’s large book collection as well as comfortable reading chair.

To start, Bolander measured his 6-foot-4 client, an advertising executive and MTV Award-winning director, while he was seated. “I needed to know how far he could reach, how much his feet stuck out when they were crossed or straight--essentially how much space he took up,” explains Bolander, who wanted the owner to fit snugly within the library. The resulting free-form bookcases determined the shape of the recessed concrete floor, which was poured in place.

Bolander handcrafted the bookcases from Douglas fir plywood, cutting the nine vertical “ribs” in his workshop; the horizontal shelves were later cut and assembled on site. “Every angle for every shelf is different; each one had to be figured and cut, then put together like a piece in a puzzle,” he says. Bolander estimates the 8-foot-tall library holds up to 2,000 books.

Now that it’s done, could he duplicate the sculptural bibliotheque? “I could get pretty darn close,” he says. “On the other hand, doing one in the same spirit--not the exact dimensions--would be easier.”