Upwardly mobile (Levitate innovates more than the world's most awesome staircase)

One of the blogs on our Feed Me bar pointed me toward this amazing multi-tasking bookcase/stairway (to heaven!) in a London home designed by Levitate Architecture. When I visited their site to see what other cool and groovy stuff they were doing, I was taken by their opening statement, which is something a lot of us could tweak to apply to what we do in book world:

We are a practice of Architects and Conservation Architects committed to designing sustainable and contextual contemporary architecture. Architecture that is in harmony with modern life and its setting. We practice what we call "innovative common sense," taking our client's brief and delving into it to find something extra, something unique. We aim to create spaces that function effectively but that are also a joy to be in...We take time to understand the wider context, physical, social, economic, of all our projects, but we also take pleasure in attention to detail. We provide a professional, friendly service and enjoy what we do.

I love that that last sentence is something of which they are particularly proud. It's not a given. It's part of the mission. Madlib all that, substituting books and readers for spaces and clients, and it's a set of directives every working author could take to heart. This is a moment and market environment that calls for "innovative common sense," if ever there was such.

By the way, the Feed Me bar item was on the New Yorker's "Book Bench" blog, a terrific mix of random industry-related stuff. Check it out.

(And no, I have not yet approached the Gare Bear with my secret plan to tear up the hallway carpet and recreate my own suburban crackerbox version of the bookway to heaven. But I will have it. Oh, yes. I will have it...)