I had a book called Systems of Living Space, by Joseph Provey, which had plans for building shelves and beds and other things around an "X-frame." It was considered an amateur woodworking book and had a 1970s "rethinking everything" vibe that went well with my 1980s environmental, minimalist tendencies. On the right is such a frame with bookshelves hanging from ropes; on the left, though you can’t really tell here, a couch with a hammock above it.
We moved in with Lisa and she blew my mind by taking my diagonal structures and placing them at an angle (instead of flat against the wall). And her kitten Mason blew my mind by climbing up to the top of them, with ease.
Later, when living in a smaller apartment, I would decide that compact bookshelves are a better way to store books, though shelves like these, suspended from ropes, turned out to be a good way to protect goldfish from cats. Looking at his bibliography, it seems that Provey would later adopt more conventional storage systems. But these were versatile and durable and I used them for many years.
