Interior Designer: Atelier TAO + C Year: 2020
Location: Hangzhou, China Photographs: Wen Studio Via Archdaily
In Hangzhou, China, atelier TAO+C designed a bookstore that encourages customers to enjoy reading. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s book, The Common Reader, the bookstore has the same intimate atmosphere of the old libraries, silent and softened.
The interior design of the spaces removed all redundant features, to focus only on what is necessary for books and reading: shelves, tables, reading and display tables, chairs. The bookcase is thus entirely covered with melamine panels, which perform several functions. First of all, they form the shelves covering all the walls and creating dividers between one area and another.
A material like melamine is perfect for designing a space like a bookcase where you can read. The panels, which can be shaped at will with matching edges, create walls, reading shelves, and shelves. Thanks to the melamine furniture, the result is a cozy space with an intimate and slightly muffled atmosphere. In addition to creating the right atmosphere, melamine-faced panels are perfect for environments with frequent visitors, thanks to the ease of hygiene and cleaning and the fireproof properties.
The bookstore is divided into two rooms, one more open to the public, the other more intimate. The seven display tables in the main room are positioned to create passages that define the customer pathways together with the vertical shelves. Melamine panels finished in a warm-colored wood veneer are juxtaposed with vertical metal columns in green, with green drapery, for an even more intimate atmosphere.
In the second room, each double-sided shelf ends with a table-height top, complemented by a chair, allowing visitors to sit and read the volumes. Here, the atmosphere is even cozier, and the single-seat at the end of the shelf lets users sit and read in an even more comfortable location, just like in a library. Veneer panels are perfect for the furniture and finishes of all the spaces in the store. Thanks to the finishes in warm-colored woods, they can create the atmosphere of the ancient libraries and, just like in libraries, they allow to soften the noise, for a softened environment. Finally, a large table for reading, with cherry wood chairs, allows customers/readers to flip through books without hurry, sitting comfortably.
This article illustrates the endless possibilities for furnishing and designing interior architecture with melamine panels, such as the Saviola Group’s 100% recycled panels. The first panels made in Italy entirely recycled from post-consumer materials.
The Saviola panel collections offer a wide range of finishes, decorations, and textures to satisfy the most demanding interior designers and the possibility of coordinating surfaces and edges.
Visit the website’s dedicated section for a complete overview of Saviola panels, the first 100% recycled panels.