Studiolo: The Long Study

A course of study with no commencement. Fifteen shelves, seventy-six books, and one capstone for each shelf that a professor reads and grades against a fixed rubric. There is no schedule, no page target and no term. You mark a book when you finish it, and a shelf closes when its books are marked. It began over the course of about a year as one reader's private reading program — an MBA in everything but the tuition. What started as a curriculum turned into a habit, and more shelves are added as subjects become interesting. WHAT A STUDIOLO IS A small private study — one room, big enough for one person and a chair. The famous ones belonged to Federico da Montefeltro around 1476, and their walls were covered floor to ceiling in wood inlay: cupboards standing half open with books, an hourglass, an armillary sphere inside them. None of it real. All of it flat. A portrait of a mind, made…