Custom home Libraries Display walls. AKA Built-in Cabinetry wall to wall. Bookcasing. And of course Bookshelve Wealth.
In the middle of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it is clear the office environment will change for good. So are at least for now the filming of newscasters and interviews and ZOOM. Where it is important that the background conveys a message. Books convey culture and knowledge. The New Home Office needs to be a part of the House for our new Normal to come. I predict it will become so more important as many more will work or work more time from home.
Here is an interesting article from. The New York Times.
Custom home Libraries Display walls, is about providing homes with a focal wall that also serves either as a Display Wall or a Library, or both.
Architects and Interior Designer like myself like to create custom Interiors and organize everything and leave to the client or user little to try to figure out as far as display. Hence to keep an organized environment.
I was born and lived my childhood in my parents home where every wall possible had books. I used to think too many, but I guess I got used to it.
Later while designing stores, and doing wall merchandising which were cabinetry and functioned very well as displays and with a degree of flexibility.
When I started focusing on Custom Homes rather than Boutique Stores, the display walls were a design resource from my unconscious I guess. So I started using this resource. I saw a perfect wall for a Custom home Display Walls and Library and designed it.
Here is a compilation of our own designs of these walls or surface in homes. We show 14 examples or photos, and describe some concepts behind them, where hopefully they will be useful or inspire home owners or Designers and Architects as well.
Certainly we welcome comments and additional examples. We’ll add projects by others too when we are inspired or learned from them.
We focus on homes, as the immense amount of beautiful Public libraries information is already out there, it is well covered and we learn from it. We might add a detail in this blog, however again, it is Custom Home, not public or Hospitality-Retail, where the need is different and more so the scale.
By Custom we mean each example is fitted to site, and in turn we are not using a Designed Unit we incorporate.
There is a large number of beautifully designed shelving sets in the market, however they are not Custom, if they are systems available to order. All our examples here are for Built-in Cabinetry. Again from time to time we might include a detail or system we consider appropriate and designed by others.
Examples do not have to be New or totally New “Custom home Display Walls and Libraries”, but can also be historical, salvaged or restored. Hence we include some that although not that old are a restoration and an update for both improved performance and Look.
For us composition and look are most important, though obviously to us too, upmost functionality needs to be there.
On the other hand Lifestyles of today are completely different perhaps than those they are updating in a wall.
The Entertainment AV centers, the Flat TV, the self contained fireplace, need to go somewhere too. Sometimes a Wet Bar too.
Because it is custom and built-in does not mean there are no modules, or module based composition, or systems. These are just customized.
Should it be Built-in Cabinetry Design, or Cabinetry Design only. Libraries and bookshelfing. Signature walls. It is not the same as kitchen cabinetry. Hence similar though much more customized. Rhythm and composition perhaps more important than storage. Nothing wrong with designing kitchens, we do those too.
In Great Rooms, where you concentrate several functions, such as study and entertainment, and where you are going to incorporate major elements such as a TV, wet bar or fireplace, your are converting what could be a storage to a full display or focal point, so often the wall becomes the signature.
My first such called signature wall* was done for a Grand room that actually contained living, dining, study and entertainment, design for two young girls moving from London where they had done High-school, to Monterrey Mexico, where they would go to college, and which they ended enjoying for 12 years.*
The room had floor to ceiling windows on the corner walls and the kitchen on the third, so only this wall was left. It made sense to concentrate all or most requirements for the Loft type space in the same wall.
I immediately thought or vertical storage or display which I had done at the Boutiques and with the use or the rolling ladder for access. The room as a study too, ended up having desks  separated from the wall, and by the corner windows.
The installation lasted at least 12 years. The clients moved but left the built in behind, we don’t know if the new owner brought it down or reconfigured it.
Wall interior length is 25″.
Once I gave an interview and forgot about it. While looking at a grand home for sale, there were some brochures and magazines, so I took one. When I opened it later that day I noticed the interview had been published. “Signature Wall”, he called it, see link below to San Francisco’s SF Gate.
http://www.sfgate.com/sfis/article/Signature-walls-are-a-home-s-digital-age-library-3737939.php
It turns out someone does read in Cancun. A former professor of Economics from the U of Texas, lives here part time, though he actually prefers fishing. Honduras Mahogany is used throughout this lIbrary.
Client requested no modern nor contemporary yet obliged to a glass staircase.
At the Buena Vista Park penthouse in Buena Vista Park, San Francisco, the room had a salvaged library on one wall (not shown) and two closets popping out on the opposite wall, and the room was dark.
So then we wanted to add light to this space and the upper level had a stair landing above the room. Hence we made it a glass floor (on left bottom. Powder room. door, and wet bar), which sees into the new Library Wall.
Under the narrow stairs which were dead space we carved a powder room, and thought you could rinse your hands outside and combine with a wet bar.
After the WC ended having its own basin. In this wall we did two things with the lower cabinet portion. We make them deeper, and we enclosed them with doors. Storage is good too, no display no dust.
The top is a countertop in stone, here with a backsplash for the wet bar, and then extending all mirrored all the way to the window with bric-a-brac. A twist of Art Deco, in the pulls sconces and marble floors and fabrics.
In this 22 level apartment
Wall interior length is 22′. It includes: Doorway overhang, Rolling ladder, Covered TV, mirrors and returns into small Cigar Humidor console not shown.
In this Polanco, Mexico City apartment, we did the Library and Display wall in a corner. Top image.
The Console side actually faces the private elevator landing. Besides it includes the air return, drawers for keys and shoes, and rolling ladder.
Below image. For continuity it can also be seen from the home office which walls are library and is a display wall for paintings too. 
A two level Custom home Library Display Wall . In red stained drift oak wood. We came in to this project as the Architect had passed away.
We marbleized 72 columns. Given that this home office had continuity with the balcony above we chose to do a two level concept by extending the wood and color treatments.
Sorry for the odd paste. This is a living-dining wall to wall built in incorporating two windows a piano area, centered on the TV-Fireplce combo, and display the Brick-a-Brack, but most important is it has books, here she will use the Dining table to work…
This one is at our own home office in Belvedere-Tiburon, California.
20 years ago I built from the ground up an Offic studio at home with it’s own entrance, bathroom and guest suite. I’m very happy I did. I used to comute to work freom Tiburon, Marin County to The Embarcadero distric of San Francisco. Certainly a nice comute including the Golden Gate Bridge and so on. But why waste the time, cost on rent, gasoline and so on, so I said why not. I’m so happy I did.
At this 2 level Penthouse, we did both New and Salvaged Display Walls and Libraries.
Top left. Salvaged 1. Though not a straight wall and split in the middle by the fireplace, we still classify in the category. We raised the base cabinets. Mirrored the back of the tops and replaced the wood old wood shelves with glass ones. Instantly making it a Display wall rather than a library.
Top right. Salvaged 2. We first recessed the TV into the sheetrock, restored the cabinetry, added lighting, and a mirrored backsplash. We painted everything black, and added the black Portoro marble fireplace surround.
Bottom Left. This room had no closet, nor a place for the TV, we made this look like it was already there and Salvaged, though it was new then.Bottom Right. Main library on a corner. New as well.
This small 800 sf apartment in Belvedere-Tiburon, California. Had ran out of storage space, as the couple where now spending more time in this their second or vacation home, and needed storage for their Art work, as well as a new large TV location. As you remove your shoes on entry it does have and ottoman shoe storage proposed. The wall incorporates existing glass console, and antique desk as well as a new sleeper chair. Mainly it is a suspended wall cabinet that spans above the entry door. It also provides a bit of an buffer from the entrance.
Wall interior length is 23’3″ (24′ CC).
Wall interior is 23’3″ (24′ CC), again. This was the home Den, where they had a 90′ TV. He insisted 1/8″ max surround. Shows existing wall outlets. Here we also show the foot print or floor plan at marble top level
3.27.24 Elle Decor on Shelving
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