Milan Design Week it’s especially good for one thing: holistically imaginative installations that, when conceived well, demonstrate the potential use of new products. Where these go wrong is in the simple placement of loosely defined, marketing gimmicky, stylized backdrops for an endless onslaught of social media playable moments.
In the first category belong the Danish electronics producers Bang & Olufsen (B&O) and Italian supplier of high quality stones Antolini. The seemingly disparate but complimentary brands joined forces to create a fully sensuous Milan Design Week installation playing the appropriate harmony of immaterial sound with emphatically material stone, presented in a recreated natural indoor environment: Antolini’s centrally located Duomo Stoneroom.
The fully sensory showcase demonstrates the brand’s prowess as well, with new and refreshed product lines cleverly paired together — more explicitly suggesting potential applications. B&O’s new Beosound Haven outdoor speaker anchors and cut Taj Mahal quartzite slabs by Antolini.
Around these totems blend elegantly manicured Zen gardens. a contextual if slightly imaginary reference to where both device and hardware might live. In the center, there is a pool of water with a waterfall of droplets falling from above.
“Design at Bang & Olufsen has always been about understanding the relationship between technology, materials and the spaces people inhabit,” says Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, Senior Director of Design. “Through Beosound Haven – our upcoming landscape speaker – we explore sound as an architectural language. It interacts with materials and forms atmosphere, creating a sophisticated sense of place that is both subtle and powerful. It reflects our ambition to find new ways for sound to enrich experience – not just as something you hear, but as something you actually feel.”
The collaboration extends to a limited run of the Beolab 18 speaker, produced using Antolini’s complete line of natural stone products in a matte finish: Amazonite, Retro Black Petrified Wood, Patagonia Original, Dalmata and Cipollino Gray Wave, as well as Taj Mahal. “In collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, we have moved beyond traditional design to embrace the outdoors,” said Carlo Alberto Antolini, owner of Antolini. “Combining the raw elegance of natural stone with precision sound, we have created a bridge between nature and technology. These landscape speakers are not just objects, they are a dialogue between the elements, turning gardens and terraces into living galleries.”
To learn more about Beosound Haven by Bang & Olufsen in collaboration with Antolini, visit bang-olufsen.com.
Photo by Max Zambelli.
