Paper labrynths: atelier bow-wow

manga pod, atelier bow-wow

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. -The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges

The library called into being in Borges' short fiction The Library of Babel was a "sphere whose exact centre is any hexagon and whose circumference is unattainable" (-The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges). In this library, hexagonal units "the height of a normal librarian" were linked in an infinite series- each hexagon opened laterally to another and identical units could be viewed repeating endlessly both above and below. The interior of every hexagon included twenty bookshelves, with each bookshelf holding thirty-two books, each book containing four hundred ten pages, each page forty lines, each line approximately eighty black letters.


Manga pod interior at 'Beautiful New World' Contemporary Visual Culture Japan

Enclosed within The Manga Pod by Atelier Bow-Wow, one can imagine the paradox of Borges' labyrinth, the explosion of an intimate reading experience as it is mirrored in units across the world. The Manga Pod is a portable reading library and was first presented at the 4th annual Gwangju Biennale, Korea (2002) and re-incarnated as Media-pod for TITLE at Bungeishunju (2005). Building on Atelier Bow Wow's interest in 'site- and use-specific approach to design', the rotating joints of the multi-tiered Manga Pod structure adapt to the movement of its users creating an intimate and flexible reading space. Custom designed pods are available for purchase from Atelier Bow-Wow.

Atelier Bow-Wow was established in 1992 by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima in Tokyo (www.bow-wow.jp).