The 100 Story House... and other ways physical books are finding new life... and new readers

The 100 Story House project from documentary filmmaker Julia Marchesi and artist Leon Reid IV is a fascinating take on what Julia was noticing going on in her Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood:  people were leaving books they were done with out on their stoops, for passers-by to take at will. 

So Julia and Leon teamed up and have launched a kickstarter campaign (fundraising from the grassroots up) to fund their vision of the 100 Story House, a six foot tall sculpture of a Brooklyn brownstone home with windows that open to allow anyone to access the books inside. 

A rendering of what the completed project will look like - the little books on legs by the side are intended to express that books have their own lives in this, their own temporary home...

Free, with a take-a-book, leave-a-book ethos, The 100 Story House is one of a string of projects aiming to get physical books into more physical hands. 

In the UK, where the phone booths are iconic but increasingly irrelevant in our age of cell phones and mobile devices, James Econs took an abandoned booth,

built library shelves above the phone space so it would still be usable, and then filled those shelves with books, calling on people to take a book and replace it...

He calls it the world's first "PhoneBoox."  He also dubbed his action "Socially Beneficial Creative Vandalism."

And then there's the very cute "Little Free Library" Project, where they're setting out to get these:

All over the world.  Their mission? 

• To promote literacy and the love of reading by building free book exchanges worldwide.
• To build a sense of community as we share skills, creativity and wisdom across generations.  
• To build more than 2,510 libraries around the world--more than Andrew Carnegie!

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

ps - I found out about all these cool projects via this Trendcentral report.