Every time we think of creating built-in bookshelves for the books pooling in stacks around the sofa, our brain gets fogged at the massiveness of the task and the cost. Then we spotted these NOT built-in bookshelves in Design Milk’s recent feature showcasing Sweden‘s “proficiency for realizing simple, yet highly proficient design that hits the bullseye between contemporary and timeless.”  The bookshelves are a display at Svenskt Tenn, the legendary Stockholm home design store. They are composed of a series of volumes — rectangles and squares of various sizes and orientations, some nestled within each other — into which books are stacked.

They remind us of a larger version of the Finnish Muuto shelving system that you configure and clip together using specially-made clips

Although we like the idea and look, the Muuto boxes, which are made of 1/2-inch MDF, seem like they might not hold much weight. And they’re not cheap.

We could imagine using heavier gauge boxes like those use for Ikea’s kitchen wall cabinets and furniture. The Besta cabinet components come in a vast array of sizes.  And of course, you could always bolt them together, or to the wall. It’s still less of a fuss than built-ins, and reconfigurable, and portable.

This recipe from Family Handyman shows how to make your own plywood boxes . For you to customize the dimensions, or have someone whip them up…