Bibliothèque’s Favorite Books

This weekend in Hoxton, Bibliothèque, a London design agency with clients like Vitra, Wallpaper, and Virgin Atlantic, is presenting its library of inspiration, supported by modular furniture brand, Vitsoe. Below, a glimpse at one of their curated shelves, which features publications by students and professors from ECAL in Switzerland—currently one of the world’s foremost design schools—along with a treatise on why tangible books are still important to their practice.

“While we were at college and in our early careers, books were the very currency that we traded on. Books were everything. Our knowledge, our reference points, our stimulation. There was no internet, so books offered us portals into design history and its contemporary context. Good books were hard to come by and had to be sought out. Obtaining the right books was the result of lengthy investigations and sometimes international travel. The fruits of our collective trips to dusty bookshops—often expensive investments—formed the beginnings of an invaluable library of art catalogs, identity guidelines, poster archives and typographic manuals. This is a resource which we continue to nurture, grow, curate, edit, and value today.”

“Today, it’s difficult not to be totally overwhelmed by the avalanche of visual content that swirls around us on a daily basis. This is where the book may start to feel overshadowed. The main problem with online design resources, is that everything can be reduced to what we call ‘pixel deep’. The context is gone. Any depth, explanation or meaning is eliminated, or flicked away with a swoosh of the finger or mouse. To us, a book is about permanence. A line in the sand. Books are a statement of intent that will still be on shelves long after we are gone, and the servers go down.”