Custom modular cube shelving for an office with brick walls

Custom modular shelving for an office in a building with exposed brickwork: a grid of cells in black tube, some of them closed with oak fronts. The task was to store books and office supplies while keeping the brick wall in view. Alongside the shelving we built a console, a media unit and a wall of cabinets for a private office.

A grid of open and closed cells

The frame is made of slim square tube and stands on a base frame that lifts the bottom row off the floor. The cells are filled in different ways: behind handleless fronts go supplies and boxes, open cells with an oak floor hold books and plants, and some are left see-through. Closed and open cells alternate in a chequerboard and the bottom row is closed entirely, so anything untidy ends up low down. The open cells have no back, so the brick wall stays visible. We placed this cube bookcase in oak and metal in two rooms.

Console and media unit in the same oak

Beside the shelving stands a console: a dark timber box with two handleless drawers on a slim black frame, with a shelf below. In the room with the screen the shelving is joined by a unit with fronts in the same oak. The same metal and a single timber pull pieces with different jobs into a set. Our office furniture set with an oak desk follows the same principle, and the frame-with-shelves idea is taken further in the home desk-shelf unit in a wall-to-wall niche.

Cabinet wall with brick in the niche

The private office posed a different task: a lot of storage on one wall. Here we built a unit with a matt black carcass and fronts with a walnut grain; on two neighbouring fronts the grain is mirror-matched. The central niche has no back: the same brickwork serves as the backdrop, lit from above by a built-in light line. More devices of the style are in our guide to industrial and loft style.

The solution suits offices in former industrial buildings and anyone looking for creative office furniture without standard cupboards. More examples are on our custom furniture for business page.