From Architectural Digest:
Jean-Jacques Megel-Nuber’s first drawing of his imagined bookstore on wheels had little in common with its final design. “It looked like the cabins in a Christmas market,” says Megel-Nuber, who is from the Alsace region of eastern France, known for its festive seasonal markets. He had originally thought about opening a brick-and-mortar bookshop but decided he wanted one that could travel to French country towns whose bookstores have often closed. He also wanted a space where he could live during his travels.
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Today, the space in which he works and lives has a bright interior with light-colored pine bookshelves and benches. A medal cladding painted a dark blue encircling the bookstore’s entrance adds a modern edge. “He left me carte blanche,” says Pauline Fagué, a recent graduate of interior design school who helped create La Maison Qui Chemine (or “The Wandering House”) with her partner, a carpenter. At the time, the couple’s firm was so new they did not have a finished prototype, but they took on the project eagerly.
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The tiny house also had to be constructed to support a stock of around 3,000 books, weighing some 1,300 pounds. To counter the library’s weight, most of the bookshelves line the wall opposite a large metal structure surrounding the entrance.
Still, driving a bookstore through the Jura Mountain range on France’s border with Switzerland is not for the faint of heart. “It’s not complicated going up,” says Megel-Nuber with a laugh of piloting the bookshop, which is larger than a standard mobile home but smaller than a tractor-trailer. “It’s complicated to descend, because the towage is heavier than the truck’s cab.” He takes books down from upper shelves while traveling to lower the vehicle’s center of gravity.
Link to the rest at Architectural Digest
(More photos at the link)