Rhizomebook Collection
The Rhizomebook Collection is a growing constellation of physical books, objects, and material projects that extends the core philosophy of Rhizomebook into the tangible world. Unlike many other works within Rhizomebook—which may take digital, conceptual, or immaterial forms—the collection consists of actual, physical items. This includes artist books, theoretical texts, ecological manuals, technological devices, and carefully curated objects. Each one is part of a long-term investigation into what a book can be: how knowledge is embodied, how information is stored or transmitted, and how a book might interact with the world as an active participant rather than a passive reflection.
Within the framework of Rhizomebook, every component—whether physical or not—is considered a Book, each assigned a Roman numeral and positioned as a node in a larger rhizomatic system. But the collection itself is distinct in its emphasis on materiality. These Books are not just ideas—they are things: touchable, usable, borrowable. Their presence introduces weight, scale, texture, and context into a system that otherwise thrives in the abstract and immaterial.
A key example of this approach is Book XXIII, an extensive collection of Braun devices produced between 1955 and 1995. The collection reflects not only a design history but a value system—where functionality, clarity, and restraint align with broader ideas of ecology, ethics, and human interaction. Rather than preserving these objects as nostalgic relics, Book XXIII treats them as active philosophical tools: concrete manifestations of design intelligence embedded in everyday life. In doing so, it expands the notion of what a book can contain—and how it can speak.
Inspired by the philosophy of the rhizome, the collection grows not through hierarchy or order, but through associative connections and conceptual entanglements. Its components carry equal status, regardless of origin or medium. A Braun coffee machine, a garden manual, or a rare reference book may each serve as a node—an entry point into the wider ecology of Rhizomebook.
Rather than functioning as an archive, the collection is alive. It evolves in rhythm with its context and invites new relationships, uses, and interpretations over time. It challenges traditional boundaries between book, artwork, and object, and underscores the idea that form and meaning emerge not in isolation, but through interaction and relation.
For further reading on the philosophical framework behind this approach, please click here.