Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Oh, The Longing!

My. Sweet. God.


Jay Walker's beautiful, idiosyncratic collector's library is turning my skin into soft green felt. All the more so because it actually looks like a nice place to sit, read, and think.

(Via Kottke)

4 comments:

DDanielle said...

My dad would have loved that place not only books but computers too! It would be fun to spend some time in there.

Robin Sloan said...

I was 100% behind you on the Dept. of Eagles track, but here I have to disagree.

I think this place feels too entirely over-the-top. And too cold. At least in these pictures, and to my eye, it looks more like a movie set than a real place where people work.

I think it's the ceiling that kills it for me. So flat and formless. Makes the whole thing feel like the matrix. If it was dark wood up there -- big sturdy beams -- it'd change everything.

Tim said...

Yeah, in general I would say I'm much more jealous of the idea of designing a personal library from scratch than the exact design of the library itself. Building a seven-foot model! I would certainly make very different choices.

But the nook above and the set of chairs and couches in the meeting room where Walker meets with his think-tanky friends looks cool AND comfortable.

And I love the range of things collected: rare books, old office technology, fossils, memorabilia from TV and movies. It's almost like seeing what eight-year-old Tim would have wanted in a library. That touches me.

Robin Sloan said...

Ha ha, yeah. Very Batcave. "I'll have a supercomputer... AND... a T-Rex. Thankyouverymuch."