Current student at Shih Chien University (Taiwan), Kuan-Sheng Wu recently won two prestigious design awards for her Matching Tree library system: the 2008 International Design Excellence Award for Student Designs and the 2008 Taiwan Young Designer Competition Awards.

Matching Tree Library System. Designed by Kuan-Sheng Wu.

As yet, Wu’s Matching Tree is still a concept, but hopefully someone soon will bring her idea to the three-dimensional world. The Matching Tree, or Tree House, is a shelving unit with a ladder built in to the bookcase, making a small home owner’s dream library within reach. Shaped like and inspired by a tree, Wu’s system employs adjustable and extendable upper components, which allows the ladder to extend from floor to ceiling-all while seamlessly acting as an integral part of the bookcase itself. Wu explains that the Matching Tree also takes its structural integrity quite seriously: at the Taiwan Young Designer Competition website, Wu states: “The V-shaped support helps to spread the weight of the bookcase and prevent it falling during an earthquake. A ladder allows the user to climb up the ‘tree’ in order to reach books on higher shelves.”

The Matching Tree uses tension as its engineering base. The pillars and joists-spreading root-like at the ceiling-make the unit completely freestanding: no drilling, no holes. The system attaches to the ceiling via round discs, which lends the Matching Tree a buggish effect, as if these are suckers (an entomologist’s dream). Constructed (in theory) of aluminum support rails and wood shelves, the Matching Tree’s materials fit into both modern and traditional interiors. That the system stands alone gives Wu’s concept mutability (perhaps even a buglike mutability). One can install the Matching Tree at the center of a room, transforming the very notion of the library; it may even act as a room divider in a small loft; or, imagine a row of them creating hallways on open business floors-a brilliant solution for a law office, as attorneys might quickly review a statute on their way to court (I know, it’s somewhat idyllic, but still a fine idea). Sometimes a design is so ingenious that it seems unavoidable; we might ask, “Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before?” But it’s the solution staring us in the face that hides so well, making Wu’s Matching Tree that much more clever.