The Rintala Eggertsson team have started to add shelves to the ‘Ark’ reading tower…
Soon, every facade of the tower will consist of hundreds of these shelves.The structure is really starting to take shape now, and it won’t be long before we start loading up the books themselves. We have received generous donations of books from Booth Books and Dominic Winter Book Auctions – and for this we’re very grateful, as the project wouldn’t have been possible without their support. We would also like to thank UPM who donated the gorgeous Finnish timber from which the tower has been constructed.
The first batch of books arrived two months ago, and the image above shows Lizzie Capon (project co-ordinator for the exhibition) trawling through the first couple of boxes. We met with members of the V&A Conservation team to go through this initial shipment of books to ensure that there wasn’t any mould or traces of bugs/pests – things to be avoided at all costs in a museum environment!
The rest of the books (approx. 6,000!) have arrived in a number of deliveries over the last few weeks. We have been building up quite a collection of boxes in Galleries 26 & 27 (currently undergoing refurbishment) which have been used for storage/workspace for the teams from Rintala Eggertsson and Studio Mumbai.
This film shows the fantastic Rintala Eggertsson volunteers who have been not only helping Dagur Eggertsson build the ‘Ark’ reading tower, but have also spent hours going through these boxes of books, sorting them into the three categories of book size that correspond to the three different shelf sizes in the tower.
The end of the film includes a little glimpse of the Studio Mumbai team who were busy working in the gallery next door, opening up the transport crates (shown below) which contain the delicate plaster panels which are being used to clad their ‘Inbetween Architecture’ structure in the Cast Courts.
