Ray&Emilio Studio has designed the Book Mountain store for the Yuhang Xinhua Bookstore and Yuhang Senior High School in Hangzhou, China.

This project was jointly commissioned by Yuhang Xinhua Bookstore and Yuhang Senior High School to create a "reading space with a human atmosphere" at the school.

"We did not design it as a mixture of normal open-shelf book sales and a tea bar," told Ray&Emilio Studio. "Instead, we abandoned the space usually used by campus bookstores based on the principle of functional rationality and decided to create a space for this rational campus."

The designers wanted to create a garden-style library where students and teachers could relax and unwind by using traditional Chinese sand, stone and wood structures as the main construction materials.

Due to the noise requirements and control in the school, as well as the construction period requirements, Ray&Emilio Studio considered using it as a device to be implanted into the overall space during the redesign process.

"There is only one core object in the entire space, which is the bookshelf," added Ray&Emilio Studio. "This bookshelf is also a mountain of books. It is an installation, the whole thing is assembled in the factory and then assembled on-site to minimise its noise."

This project has been shortlisted in the retail interior category of Dezeen Awards China 2023.

Studio: Ray&Emilio Studio
Project: Book Mountain Store
Credits: Yuhang Xinhua Bookstore and Yuhang Senior High School