Stone, sound and the countryside: at Antolini® MilanoDuomo Stoneroom®Milan Design Week 2026 became the stage for an installation that proposed something quieter and more radical than the spectacle — a new language for the designed landscape, born from the encounter between Antolini®his material mastery and Bang & Olufsen’s vision of high-fidelity audio beyond the home interior.
The setting was already a statement in itself – a space defined by the depth and presence of natural stone, where the Italian brand’s seventy years of material dominance were embedded in every surface. It was here that the two companies chose to preview Beosound Havena horizontal speaker that extends the Danish brand’s sonic vision beyond the domestic interior, and to explore what results when two distinct but complementary forms of craftsmanship – one rooted in stone and the other in sound – come into dialogue with the outdoors.
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
Milan Design Week Exhibition ©Bang & Olufsen and Antolini®
The exhibition, immersive through sound and design, focused on the horizontal speaker as a protagonist in which Antolini®‘s natural stone, through its Atelier program Bang & Olufsenblends seamlessly with the aluminum, sculpting the project’s characteristic sphere shape, creating a marriage of materials that feels right at home in this setting. The atmosphere was thought to show how the natural world can interact with digital sound, how green and stone can be combined with aluminum, the precision material the Danish brand has worked with since its inception.
Visitors were invited, through a symbolic threshold, to leave behind the chaotic sounds of the city and immerse themselves in a contemporary reinterpretation of a garden – a flourishing one, where green elements enveloped the space and led them to the core of the exhibition: a reflective water surface with attention-grabbing drops and waves. The surface featured Taj Mahal® quartzite in a matte finish, chosen for its soft tonality and refined texture, allowing for a subtle interplay between light, material, sound, air, showing how knowledge can shape an emotional experience as powerfully as any technology.
Craftsmanship, sensory experience, heritage, innovation, acoustic expertise, deep awareness of natural stone: the project brought the two brands together in a space suspended in time, where sound and natural elements guide perception and created a new language for outdoor living. The Italian stone brand, a family-owned company with seventy years of expertise in manufacturing marble and natural stone for architectural and design projects worldwide, guided the collaboration – a mastery of material that gives the Danish brand’s aural vision a natural, tactile dimension it could not have achieved alone.
Selected natural stones were explored throughout the collaboration, each chosen for its distinctive depth, pattern, tactile quality, colour, reinforcing stone as the primary architectural medium in the installation. This dialogue stems from the belief that sound and design are not only deeply connected, but can together create an architectural layer – one that, through its vegetal and sculptural stone surfaces Antolini®His legacy reshapes our perception and transforms the environments we live in.
The result is a material composition where acoustic performance and design coexist seamlessly, illustrating how sound, design and materiality work together to shape the perception of space. This approach equally reflects the Italian company’s design philosophy, extending its know-how beyond interiors to outdoors, where natural stone plays a central role in defining atmosphere, texture and, above all, emotional depth.
Alongside the outdoor installation, the collaboration extends to a sophisticated material exploration of the iconic Beolab 18 speakersreinterpreted through Antolini®natural stones in a matte finish. Each stone was chosen for the distinct sensory world it evokes – the deep, mineral green of Amazonite®, the petrified memory embedded in Retro Black Petrified Wood, the sweeping geological narrative of Patagonia Original, the graphic contrast of Dalmata®, the fluid movement captured in Cipollino GreyWave® and the warm calm of Mahj.
Made in a limited series, each piece is uniquely defined by the character of its material – no two stones are the same, no two objects are the same – translating sound into a spatial and sensory experience both indoors and outdoors. Building on this collaboration, introduced in 2025, the project marks a new chapter between the two partners, evolving a joint exploration of craftsmanship, innovation and material excellence in the realm of outdoor living.
“In collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, we have moved beyond traditional design to embrace the outdoors. Combining the raw elegance of natural stone with precision sound, we’ve created a bridge between nature and technology. These landscape speakers are not just objects. is a dialogue between elements, turning gardens and terraces into living galleries where history and avant-garde meet to host your most important moments“, he observes Carlo Alberto AdoliniOwner of Antolini®.
What this collaboration ultimately suggests is a shift in the way we think about the designed landscape – where luxury is measured in intention, where the materials we choose to live with carry meaning, where sound is considered an element like light or texture. In a design culture that increasingly turns to the boundaries between inside and outside, between the natural and the built, this project seems like a way to rethink the spaces we inhabit, to go beyond four walls and recognize that they deserve the same depth of thought, the same commitment to art, the same ability to move us.
