Based in Manila, Philippines, Fully Booked uses innovative store design to deviate from the tired book-store as library design model.

Making bookshops interesting, over and above the volumes that are on offer, is a perennial problem and few have actually managed to get away from the feel of a library – a model that has been around as long as the sector itself. Visit the Fully Booked flagship store in Manila, however, and there is proof that things can be done differently.

On entering this five-storey shop the first thing that the visitor will encounter is a 24 ft high installation comprising 3,000 discarded books. The books form a picture, created by LA-based artist Mike Stilkey, of a woman holding a pink cat.

The whole is dubbed Discarded Romance. The installation was originally on exhibit in Times Square in Hong Kong but was bought by Fully Booked and made the leading feature of its flagship.

Bookselling may involve shifting large numbers of volumes and trying to turn a penny but that does not mean that the stores have to be dull.