Every day that I come across a great furniture misfit, I dream of finding 10 that could someday work as a cohesive unit. After about two years of creating our weekly Top Ten lists of everything design-related, I’ve finally stumbled upon two handfuls of unprecedented, truly remarkable wooden shelving units that fit into no one category. Without further ado, the Top Ten: Unconventional Wooden Shelving units are here for your viewing pleasure – full of stackable, leaning, angled, geometric, sliding, modular, sustainable, and room partition-evoking designs – that arrive from all around the world.

Top Ten: Unconventional Wooden Shelving.

Unique, Modern Wooden Shelving Units that Break the Mold

1. Tetrad Mega

DESIGNER: Brave Space Design
PRICE: $3,500- 7,000
Dimensions: 88″H x 11″D x 99″L for 10-piece set

The Tetrad Mega shelving by Brave Space Design provides your worldly accessories with deep, 11″ shelving that resembles a pinball machine or game of tetris. In 5- or 10-piece block sets, the modular shelving is both reversible and interchangeable, made from either walnut or ash wood right in Brooklyn, New York.

2. Folio
DESIGNER: Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
MANUFACTURER: Established & Sons
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: 78.7″L x 14.1″D x 53.1″H or 98.4″L x 14.1″D x 27.1″H

Made with a combination of solid oak, oak veneer on MDF, wool felt, and aluminum, this rectangular shelving unit by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec comes in two different sizes and “offers a new typology of furniture” that blends elaborate mechanics with an easy-to-use system. It tidies up a room with the look of basic shelving while keenly hiding an aluminum track behind its doors adorned in soft felt.

3. Ivy
DESIGNER: Thomas Bernstrand
MANUFACTURER: Swedese
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: 34″H x 30″D x 88″W per unit

Almost a conventional shelving system if not for the haphazard lean that the units can maintain without toppling over. The Ivy by Thomas Bernstrand for Swedese comes in separate units that are either solid Ash wood in white or in a black lazur finish, or are made from solid Pine wood in a natural lacquer finish.

4. Saddle Shoes
DESIGNER: John Houshmand
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: 93″H x 36″W x 1-5/8″D

Also known as John Houshmand’s design Nº 0159, the Saddle Shoes shelf is created using individual, unique pieces of wood that form a magnified checkered look with four rectangular shapes using dark and light shades of solid wood. Equipped with 1/2″ thick starfire glass shelves at intermittent points up its large wooden backdrop, the Saddle Shoes has us yearning for a twist cone.

5. Stealth
MANUFACTURER: BuiltIN Studio
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: varies

Made with some of the most beautiful wood I’ve seen against this white wall, the Stealth shelf is made by BuiltIN Studio using solid Walnut wood that is finished with a clear satin glaze. With a flat edge and two diagonals, the Stealth uses gravity to its advantage – creating a built-in bookend and a tempting angle that shakes up dull wall space.

6. Leaning Shelves
DESIGNER: Deger Cengiz
MANUFACTURER: Voos
PRICE: $750
Dimensions: 78″H x 12″W x 9″D

Use the Leaning Shelves by Deger Cengiz for Voos as a magazine holder, a bookshelf, or as miniature presentations of trinkets and household accessories. The versatility is obvious in the tall shelving structures, but the origin of its parts is hidden in the reclaimed Redwood that was salvaged from an old water tower in New York. Using no screws or hardware, Deger Cengiz joined the pieces using simple wood planes.

7. Mortaise
DESIGNER: Yota Kakuda
MANUFACTURER: Ligne Roset
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: n/a

Looking a touch country with the combination of wood finishes with a dark accent color on its shelves, the Mortaise is a brand new 2012 piece that Tokyo-based Yota Kakuda designed for Ligne Roset. Describing his design as a “pared-down, timeless and light piece which achieves a perfect balance between full and empty, light and dark,” Kakuda’s Mortaise shelving comes in several sizes to fit into any space perfectly as a nightstand, bookshelf, kitchen storage unit, etc.

8. Rek No.4
MANUFACTURER: Casimirmeubelen
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: 63″H x 63″W x 18″D

Serve up the Casimirmeubelen’s design of the Rek No.4 as a room divider and shelving system at the same time. With a folded, accordian look that is perfectly balanced on either side, the optical illusion takes only a second to gauge how strong the solid wood construction is in comparison to its topple-over chance.

9. L/M/N Furniture

DESIGNER: Valentin Bussard
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: varies

On the opposite side of the spectrum from many a shelving design, Valentin Bussard’s L/M/N Furniture rests against a wall, maximizing small space square footage by offering its shelf for small items, the twiggy limbs as coat hangers, and a mirror (on a smaller version of this design). As Bussard notes about what I consider to be a lanky clothing and keys organizer, L/M/N is “playful and refined, they are designed to be functional, practical and take up little space”.

10. New Mexico Slippery
DESIGNER: Mark Righter
PRICE: Available upon request
Dimensions: varies

As part of an entire Slippery Shelf Collection, Mark Righter goes for broke in the modular sphere of shelving with his New Mexico Slippery Shelf for Cambium Studio. Offered in bamboo, FSC hardwood and reclaimed timber, the sustainable solutions for lofty storage are paired with the simplicity of screws in the wall-mounted, central panel alone and all pieces are finished in beeswax to capitalize on their sustainable and healthy result.

Hope you enjoyed our roundup of the Top Ten Unconventional Wooden Shelves!

Top Ten articles publish every Tuesday. Email 3rings@designerpages.com if there’s a category you’d like to see.