This stepped cardboard installation was designed and built by Berlin University of Arts students to display their own work and meandered around a gallery at their summer show.

The UdK Bookshop was made from six hundred corrugated-cardboard panels that were cut, folded and glued to create a lattice structure strong enough for sitting on.

The installation was bent into sweeping curves and could be compressed to a tenth of its full length.

Students Dalia Butvidaite, Leonard Steidle and Johannes Drechsler won the competition to design the installation, which they built in collaboration with the rest of the participants.

At the end of the four-day summer show the installation was auctioned off.

All photographs are by Reiner Hausleitner.

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Here's some more from the designers:

UdK Berlin, Germany / Bookshop 2010

The UdK Bookshop was created in 2009 by a group of architecture, art and graphic design students wanting to provide an interdisciplinary platform for the works of students and professors, which until then had been missing at the yearly open house. During the three day event thousands of visitors have the opportunity to explore the works of students from art and architecture to graphic design and fashion and much more.

The Bookshop was conceived with the goal of highlighting works from throughout the university in a central location, while offering a program of events including readings and informal discussions among professors from different faculties. This year saw artists and UdK Professors Olafur Eliasson and Gregor Schneider coming together to talk about "Installations and Their Spaces" and media theorist Siegfried Zielinski with Graphic Designer Günter Karl Bose on "The time of the Book."

The design of this year's Bookshop was selected from the entries in a student competition, and was subsequently built by the competition participants.

In the winning design, cardboard was chosen as the main material due to its flexibility, stability, affordability, sense of impermanence, lightness and last but not least, its recyclability.

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Six hundred 2,6 by 1,3 meter corrugated cardboard panels were cut, perforated, folded and glued together to form a massive block, which in turn was pulled apart like a giant accordian to achieve its final shape. Adaptable to any space, the entire shelving unit can be easily folded down to a tenth of its ultimate length for storage or transport purposes.

The cardboard itself, despite being light in nature, provides enough rigidity not only for the books, but also for the lowest shelf, which doubles as a bench for events, a place to display oversized objects, or simply to sit comfortably while leafing through a book.

The originally rectangular room was transformed into an unique space with the shelving units serving as background and space-defining elements. By cutting away the corners of the rooms, enough storage space was ensured for the inventory.

At the end of the four days, the shelving unit was auctioned off, ensuring funding for more publications as well as the continuance of the Bookshop in the coming year.

Organisation : Florian Hennig, Eric Zapel
Professor : Florian Riegler
Assistants : Dipl.Ing. Jeanne-Françoise Fischer; AA Dipl. Karoline Markus
Design : Dalia Butvidaite, Leonard Steidle, Johannes Drechsler
Manufacturing : Fabian Wolf, Tobias Benjamin Bosse, Dalia Butvidaite, Eva Susanne Roll, Doerte Boeschemeyer, Johannes Arolt, Marie Poth, Leonard Steidle, Lisa Josephine Goethling, Johannes Drechsler, Karl Naraghi, Anja Schumacher, Paulo Felipe Bellani Mendes, Anne Bruschke, Irina Hoppe, Daniel Ripplinger, Anna Derriks, Georg Hana, Lena Wimmer, Paul Greschik, Johannes van Suntum, Dulcinea Gomes, Eric Goesswald, Anastasia Becker, Edem

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