In 1971’s Design for the Real World, author Victor Papanek points out, “Design is basic to all human activities—the placing and patterning of any act toward a desired goal constitutes a design process.”
No place serves as a better reminder of this sentiment—that design is everything and everything is design—than the shelves of Resource lending library. With two New York City outposts—embedded within shop-slash-studio Lichen in Ridgewood, Queens, and the Herman Miller retail flagship on Manhattan’s Park Avenue—the library features roughly 400 titles that members can check out for 30 days, for $5 a month.
Beyond the obvious—books on Noguchi, the Eames Office, Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson—Resource features titles that dive into skateboards (Nike SB: The Dunk Book), record sleeves (Funk & Soul Covers), and two-way radio communication (QSL? Do You Confirm Receipt of My Radio Transmission), among a myriad of others centering on anything “basic to all human activities.”
Books are tangible reminders that all of us interact with design, and the niche titles do this best: a reminder that everyone engages with accessible design, from curb cuts to the big blue button that opens a set of doors (Accessible America: A History of Design and Disability); musings on public toilets in major cities (an issue of Dirty Furniture magazine); and an exercise imagining what stools might look like as salt-and-pepper shakers (Hackability of the Stool).
The result is something for everyone, from card-carrying design nerds to anyone with a general sense of curiosity about the built environment and the objects within it.
Resource is a project founded by Lichen’s Alison Beshai, who handles strategy and project management, copywrites, and produced Lichen’s own book, Our Floors Are Uneven.
In 2018, while living in Washington, D.C., and between jobs in fashion and real estate, she found herself “buying a lot of design books.” After taking advantage of the MoMA moving sale, she says she felt like she was doing her own independent study into the world of design.
“I noticed the impact that collecting and reading through these books was having on my life,” Beshai says. “At the time, there weren’t really any design bookstores in D.C. except for the AIA's [American Institute of Architects].”
Prohibitive costs can create a barrier to entry for would-be book collectors and avid browsers alike. The lending library makes titles like Herman Miller’s A Way of Living (available to check out at both Resource locations) accessible beyond its retail price of $129. “Design books are some of the most expensive, but rightfully so. They’re beautiful, and so much work goes into them,” says Beshai. “I just thought it would be amazing if people could access them without the price barrier, and what types of people they could reach if that was the case.”
She first pitched the idea to a real estate developer, and architecture firm Gensler soon came aboard as a sponsor. What was supposed to be a five-week-long pop-up doubled to ten, as buzzy interest mounted and book donations rolled in from across the city. (Serendipitously, the Mies van der Rohe-designed D.C. public library’s flagship was closed for renovation at the time, and Beshai was granted access to their entire collection—from which she hand-picked 300 titles to add to the pop-up’s robust collection.)
When she moved to New York City, a mutual friend connected Beshai with Lichen team member Eric Mayes, who then introduced her to its founders Ed Be and Jared Blake. They quickly green-lit the collaboration. The lending library is a natural match for Lichen, which is part studio, part shop, and part incubator with a north star of inclusivity, connecting design to the local community.
Humble beginnings marked Resource’s first New York chapter. “We only had about 100, 150 books, and I was using Google Drive to organize it all,” Beshai says. “It was all super manual.”
Over the next two years, Beshai's friend Amanda Figueroa built the library a custom online system, Warby Parker (for which Lichen designed an eyewear tray) donated $5,000 worth of books, and Herman Miller joined as a partner for a second location. Having library shelves on lower Park Avenue makes Resource more accessible for the better part of the five boroughs, given the Herman Miller flagship’s proximity to ample subway lines. The partnership also bolstered visibility. “Sometimes when you start something as grassroots as this has been, it can have this feel that it’s a smaller project,” Beshai says. “But to have a brand like Herman Miller see the value and amplify it, it sends a bigger message that this could go from something that’s just a project to a movement.”
As for the future of that movement, Beshai’s already eyeing a third location. She’s also focusing on engaging members with programming that will bring together a like-minded group of voracious design readers.
For now, the book-obsessed Resource founder is in heaven. “There are days where I see people come into Lichen and curl up in the corner at the shelf reading books and I’m like, ‘This is all I need. This is it.’” she says. “I don’t even care if you check it out, just the fact that they’re utilizing it, that excites me.”
“Sometimes when you start something as grassroots as this has been, it can have this feel that it’s a smaller project,” Beshai says. “But to have a brand like Herman Miller see the value and amplify it, it sends a bigger message that this could go from something that’s just a project to a movement.”
01 Interior Design: Uchida, Mitsuhashi,
Nishioka & Studio 80 Vol. II
Ed Be
02 Problems of Design &
by George Nelson
Jared Blake
03 W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black
America, Edited by Whitney Battle-Baptiste & Britt Rusert
Eric Mayes
04 Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from
a Refugee Camp, Edited by Azra Aksamija,
Raafat Majzoub, & Melina Philippou
Alison Beshai
05 Charlotte Perriand: The Modern Life,
Edited by Justin McGuirk
Christine Espinal
06 Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals
for Design Professionals by Rob Thompson
Alvaro Ucha Rodriguez
07 Are We Human
by Beatrize Colomina
Thana Pramadono
08 Designing Design
by Kenya Hara
Jesse Lee
09 High-Tech: The Industrial Style and Source
a Refugee Camp, Book For the Home,
by Joan Kron & Suzanne Slesin
Kelsey Keith
10 Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther
McCoy Reader, Edited by Susan Morgan
Amy Auscherman
11 A Dictionary of Color Combinations
Noah Schwarz
Vice President of Design, Herman Miller
12 Herman Miller: A Way of Living, By
Amy Auscherman, Sam Grawe &
Leon Ransmeier
Ben Watson
13 Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus,
Black Mountain College, and Yale, By
Frederick A. Horowitz & Brenda Danilowitz
Ryan Reggiani
14 Chairs, Edited by
George Nelson
Alexa Hagen
15 Design as an Attitude,
by Alice Rawsthorn
Kelly O'Hara
16 Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and
Pattern in Narrative, by Jane Alison
Molly Singleterry
17 How to Live with Objects by
Monica Khemsurov & Jill Singer
Jenna Simmons
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