Van Alen Books is an architecture and design bookstore and public reading room located at the organization’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Van Alen Books is motivated by an urgent need for spaces where architecture books can be discovered and discussed.
Inviting the public to linger and browse,the store features a 14-foot-tall seating platform crafted from a stack of seventy recycled doors, which ascend to create an amphitheater overlooking 22nd Street through the glazed storefront. The solid wood doors came all from one hotel demolished in NJ, through a nonprofit supplierof salvaged building materials.
The doors form a triangular installation referencing the steps of Times Square’s TKTS booth, an iconic project originated through Van Alen Institute’s 1999 design competition.
This highly visible storefront space was, at the time, New York City’s only book emporium andgathering place devoted singularly to architecture and design publications, and an open platform to discuss the city and its public space.