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Austria Is Turning Its Power Lines Into Giant Metal Animals

Few would call a power pylon beautiful, or even interesting. Yet, along Austria’s power corridors, a quiet revolution is underway. The Austrian Power Giants concept, recently honored by the Red Dot Design Award, swaps utilitarian shapes for animal-inspired silhouettes. Suddenly, the transmission of energy becomes a celebration of place, blending technical necessity with the poetry of wildlife and local culture. And I’ll be honest: when I first saw these photos, I expected another half-baked “let’s make infrastructure cute” gimmick that collapses under scrutiny.

But here’s the thing: Austrian Power Grid actually engineered these. The stork and stag pylons have been pre-tested for structural stability and high-voltage performance, which means this isn’t vaporware concept art destined to die in a Behance portfolio. They’ve brought in Baucon as the construction partner, Robert Glas handled statics, and GP-Design (Roland Kaufmann) tackled the aesthetics. The team is led by Paul Japek with engineering from Christoph Mathe and Philipp Bader, so there’s real technical muscle backing the vision. This won in the Electrification and Decarbonisation category, and given how much resistance grid expansion faces across Europe, the timing feels deliberate.

Designer: GP-Design for Austrian Power Grid

Austria has nine states, and each one gets its own animal: a stork for Burgenland’s migratory routes, a stag for the Alpine regions of Lower Austria. The silhouettes are rendered in the same lattice framework you’d see on any transmission tower, maintaining the load-bearing logic while reshaping the profile into something recognizable from kilometers away. What strikes me is how the forms don’t fight the engineering; the antlers of the stag pylon double as crossarms for the power lines, and the stork’s wings naturally extend outward to support cable spans. It’s a rare case where aesthetics and function actually converge instead of one compromising the other.

The real test will be public reception once these go live. NIMBY opposition to grid infrastructure is fierce, especially in rural and scenic areas where people (understandably) don’t want their views dominated by industrial metal. Austrian Power Grid is betting that regional pride and visual interest can shift that calculus. If a community sees a pylon as a landmark rather than an eyesore, the theory goes, acceptance follows. Whether that plays out in practice depends on execution, but the images so far are striking enough that I think they’re onto something here.

The post Austria Is Turning Its Power Lines Into Giant Metal Animals first appeared on Yanko Design.

Will Wang Left Apple to Build Smart Glasses That Feel Invisible. Here’s Why.

The world doesn’t need another gadget vying for attention; it needs technology that steps back and lets people live. Will Wang, whose journey spans continents and tech giants, has made this idea central to Even Realities‘ smart glasses. After rising through the ranks at Apple, where he led engineering efforts on next-generation human interface technologies, Wang founded his own company with a contrarian vision: start with what makes great eyewear, then carefully embed the intelligence. In a market crowded with flashy experiments and entertainment-first approaches, Wang’s philosophy is refreshingly restrained, grounded in the elegant traditions of eyewear craftsmanship and powered by invisible intelligence that activates only when needed.

The result is the G1 series, smart glasses that look and feel like premium eyewear because that’s exactly what they are. Wang’s unique background, bridging Eastern pragmatism with Western innovation, has shaped a product that prioritizes presence over performance specs, comfort over complexity. From material choices that ensure all-day wearability to battery systems designed around human rhythms rather than charging cycles, every decision reflects a deeper understanding of how technology should serve daily life. We sat down with Wang to explore how he and his team are quietly redefining the rules of wearable technology, one thoughtful design choice at a time.

Yanko Design: Welcome to Yanko Design! It could be great to start from what glasses mean to you, and how you found yourself in the smart glasses world.

Will Wang: I’ve worn glasses my whole life – I have quite a strong prescription, so they’ve always been more than an accessory to me. They represent more of a tool that transforms how I see the world. At a certain point in my career, I started wondering – if glasses can already change your life that much, what happens if we make them even more capable? That’s how Even Realities began – not by trying to add technology to your face, but by enhancing something that’s already deeply human and familiar. We started from the existing tool and asked ourselves how technology could make them even more powerful.

Yanko Design: The Even Realities G1 has a fairly large cultural value that most people don’t know. For example, I noticed a few keynote speakers (especially for TED) wearing the glasses to replace cue cards and teleprompters. What do you think makes them so popular amongst professionals?

Will Wang: I believe talented people are drawn to tools that can add to their lives without distracting them from their final goal. And they also want control. Even G1 offers exactly that. Public speaking is a good example. Teleprompters are painful for a lot of speakers – having one subtly integrated into your glasses, without anybody noticing, means added confidence and more focus on delivering a great speech. But that’s not it – we embedded a series of capabilities that can help in several other occasions: live translations, speech transcription, quick notes – all extremely powerful tools to elevate the day-to-day. With G1, they also get control. Information appears in front of you when you need it, gone when you don’t. That ability to be more natural, more connected – that’s why people love them.

Yanko Design: Talking about the cultural value, a lot of what makes the G1 so remarkable is that it truly looks like an ordinary pair of sleek spectacles. How did you balance the need for lightweight frames with the demands of electronics and battery?

Will Wang: That balance was probably one of the hardest parts. We started from the shape and proportions of real eyewear, not from the technology. Our goal was to stay true to the original tool – a pair of display smart glasses that are light, feel good to the touch, and respect eyewear design. We knew that we had to design Even G1 so it’s the first thing you wear in the morning and the last you take off before going to bed. It was hard, and we are certainly not done, but I believe we achieved our goal. Also, Even G1 can be purchased with the highest quality prescription lenses – something we had to achieve if we want to credibly represent the true evolution of traditional spectacles.

Yanko Design: What are the most important ingredients that make a pair of smart glasses truly “invisible” in daily life?

Will Wang: Three things: comfort, discretion, and relevance. Comfort so you forget you’re wearing them. Discretion so they don’t scream about themselves – no lights, no cameras, no sounds, no chunky designs. A quiet tool that blends with your personality. And relevance, so what appears in your view always feels timely and useful, never intrusive. When those three align, technology becomes invisible.

Yanko Design: You mentioned no cameras or sounds. There’s a lot of discussion in the industry about what a pair of smart glasses should feature – cameras, speakers, mono or multi HUDs. Why did you decide against including cameras or external speakers in the G1?

Will Wang: Because not everything that’s possible is necessary. We didn’t want to create a surveillance tool or a mini entertainment system. Our belief is that technology should respect both your space and the people around you. So no cameras that make a conversation feel uncomfortable, no external audio that takes you out of the moment. An interface that feels just yours – intentional and human.

Yanko Design: There’s also “designing for presence,” a term used by Even Realities that I think our readers would love to understand better.

Will Wang: Presence is what happens when you’re fully engaged in the moment – not half in your phone, not half in entertainment. When we design for presence, we ask: does this feature keep you connected to the real world, or pull you away from it? Our goal is always the former. We are building technology that enhances your day-to-day instead of replacing it.

Yanko Design: Where do you think Even Realities has the edge over the rest of the market? What makes you truly proud?

Will Wang: We’re not chasing short-term fame or giving false promises. At Even Realities, we believe in a quieter form of technology that rejects noise – not just the literal noise of notifications and alerts, but the noise of tech that demands to be seen and felt at all times. Instead, our products are built to integrate softly into people’s lives. They don’t compete with your personality – they complement it. They’re designed with intention, and respect for human attention. Quiet doesn’t mean passive. It means intelligent, elegant, and purposeful. I’m proud that G1 feels like a natural extension of you, not a piece of hardware on your face.

Yanko Design: How do you define the boundary between helpful information and overload for someone wearing G1? I ask because other rivals in this space have put a lot of effort on interactions around image recognition, messaging, and content consumption, but it looks like you kept it to the core functional needs.

Will Wang: That’s exactly the distinction we wanted to make. At Even Realities, we believe that more information isn’t always better – especially when it’s right in front of your eyes. The goal was never to fill your field of view with notifications or messages. We wanted to design something that respects your attention – that surfaces what truly matters in the moment, and then gets out of the way. So instead of trying to replicate your phone on your face, we focused on essential, functional interactions that enhance your experience rather than compete with it – things like navigation, translations, sensitive notifications configured by you, and an AI assistant. It’s about utility over novelty. That’s what defines the boundary for us – technology that feels invisible until you need it.

Yanko Design: And if you could embed one new capability into eyewear, without any constraint, what would it be and why?

Will Wang: Making the lenses capable of autofocusing and dynamically adjusting prescriptions would be a game changer. That way, people’s vision could be greatly heightened – personalized and adaptive in real time.

Yanko Design: Finally, for our enthusiastic designers, can you leave us with a few industrial and interface design secrets or tips that you think are important in the category?

Will Wang: Nothing new, but I believe technology needs to go back to where it started – improving people’s lives. Start from the human, not the hardware. And remember: the most advanced interface is still the one you barely notice.

The post Will Wang Left Apple to Build Smart Glasses That Feel Invisible. Here’s Why. first appeared on Yanko Design.

Adaptive Design Meets Everyday Life: Expand Furniture’s Ingenious Solution Pieces

Imagine a 750-square-foot studio apartment that contains a full bedroom, dedicated workspace, dining area for six, and a living room that seats eight people comfortably. The single occupant isn’t performing spatial magic or violating physics. They’re working with furniture that understands transformation as a design principle rather than a compromise.

Designer Expand Furniture

Expand Furniture, a Canadian company operating since 2012 on a direct-to-consumer model, builds products around a philosophy that challenges fundamental assumptions about residential design. Their approach treats furniture not as static objects occupying fixed space but as adaptive systems that reshape environments based on immediate needs. Their customer base spans urbanites in compact apartments and suburban families in larger homes who simply want rooms that adapt to how they actually live.

What strikes me about their approach is the rejection of “small space furniture” as a limiting category. These aren’t miniaturized versions of conventional pieces or folding compromises that sacrifice quality for compactness. Instead, Expand Furniture treats transformation as the primary design challenge, creating pieces that maintain full functionality in multiple configurations while hiding mechanical complexity behind clean aesthetics.

The Expanse Inverse Murphy Bed: Cabinet-Free Wall Bed Design

Traditional Murphy beds require bulky enclosed cabinets and mount high on walls, creating installation constraints and visual weight that dominate rooms. The Expanse Inverse Murphy Bed eliminates the cabinet entirely, creating what Expand calls a “breakthrough in space-expanding design that doesn’t look like a Murphy bed at all.” The result is a clean, modern appearance that matches varied room aesthetics rather than announcing its transformation capability.

The innovation centers on mounting location and structural approach. The bed mounts at headboard level rather than requiring full-height wall clearance, solving the architectural conflicts that have frustrated Murphy bed owners for decades. Windows, bulkheads, pipes, and wall art no longer dictate whether you can install a wall bed. According to Expand Furniture, this five-year development project specifically addressed customer feedback requesting lower-height Murphy beds that could coexist with existing architectural elements.

The mechanism represents sophisticated engineering concealed behind simple operation. Hidden pistons and invisible hardware keep mechanics out of sight. The bed face serves as a floating support base when opened, with one-piece welded steel bed frame and slat system supporting any queen mattress up to 11 inches thick. The floating leg design and clean side profile when folded create an open, free aesthetic rather than the enclosed cabinet look of traditional Murphy beds.

Box Coffee Curve: Handcrafted Oak Transformation

The Box Coffee Curve showcases artistry alongside mechanical ingenuity. Crafted from premium hardwood oak, the curved fluted design features hand-cut, shaped, and polished details created by skilled artisans. This level of craftsmanship elevates the piece beyond purely functional transformation furniture into statement design that radiates sophistication.

The transformation sequence reveals thoughtful problem-solving. In its closed state, the table presents as an elegant low-profile coffee table at 47.2 inches long by 31.5 inches wide by 11.8 inches high. A stainless steel lever allows height adjustment to any position up to 31.5 inches, at which point the table extends to 86.8 inches using three 13.2-inch panels stored inside the base. The result accommodates up to 12 people with five on each side and one on each end.

The structural engineering supports serious use rather than occasional transformation. The table handles 250+ pounds capacity, sturdy enough for large dinners with full place settings, serving dishes, and elbows on the table. The oak hardwood top receives a heat, stain, and scratch-resistant seal. Solid metal dowels secure the extension leaves in place, while rail locks prevent unwanted extension, creating a stable surface that handles daily use without mechanical anxiety.

The hidden storage integration eliminates the extension leaf problem that plagues traditional dining tables. Where do you store leaves when not needed? How do you access them quickly? The Box Coffee Curve answers both questions by housing leaves within the table’s own volume, accessible exactly when needed through the transformation sequence rather than requiring closet space and manual retrieval.

Compatto Revolving Murphy Bed: Italian Engineering Meets Remote Work Reality

The Compatto represents the most mechanically ambitious piece in Expand’s lineup. This Italian-manufactured system combines a queen Murphy bed with an integrated wide desk supporting dual monitors or a full home office, plus extra shelving for monitors, books, and office supplies. The unit rotates 180 degrees to reveal the bed while books and decorative items remain balanced on shelves throughout the transformation. All mechanics are engineered for smooth, single-person operation.

The design addresses the spatial reality of remote work head-on. Morning email happens at the 71.25-inch-wide desk. Afternoon video calls use the same workspace with dual monitor support. Evening work sessions continue at the integrated desk surface. Overnight guests arrive, and the unit rotates to deploy the bed. The next morning, everything converts back to workspace mode through single-person operation. All within the same square footage, without furniture shuffling or room purpose conflicts.

According to Expand Furniture, this became a major seller during remote work surges, with 39 customer reviews averaging 4.4 stars. The piece solves the fundamental problem of rooms needing to serve multiple incompatible functions without space to dedicate separate areas. The revolving mechanism provides spatial separation traditionally achieved through walls and doors, but within a single integrated system.

The Compatto Rotating Office Murphy Bed with Desk showcases Italian manufacturing in its details and finish options. The system uses thin engineered panels that remain lightweight while maintaining structural integrity. A one-piece welded metal bed frame with wood slat support handles 440 pounds combined sleeping capacity. The unit comes with an included Italian memory foam mattress. The 86.7-inch-tall unit maintains a 23.25-inch depth when shelves are closed, extending to 96.85 inches when the bed deploys. Finish options span 11 wood tones from white to walnut to dark gray, allowing integration with existing decor rather than dictating room aesthetics.

Design Philosophy: Five Years From Customer Need to Product Launch

The Expanse Inverse Murphy Bed exemplifies Expand Furniture’s design philosophy. Customers identified specific architectural obstacles preventing Murphy bed installation. Rather than suggesting workarounds or accepting market limitations, the design team spent five years developing a solution that fundamentally addressed these constraints while maintaining the core value proposition of reclaimed floor space.

This iterative approach extends across their product line. The direct-to-consumer model creates unusual feedback loops. Without retail intermediaries filtering customer requests, issues and ideas flow directly to designers. Products evolve based on actual usage patterns rather than purely aesthetic trends or engineering-driven redesigns. Tables adjust to accommodate different seating arrangements. Storage solutions respond to real-world organization needs. The furniture adapts to how people live rather than requiring people to adapt to furniture constraints.

The five-year development cycle for a Murphy bed variant demonstrates commitment to solving problems correctly rather than quickly. In furniture, this represents rapid iteration. The willingness to invest this timeline suggests confidence that addressing real spatial problems creates sustainable market position beyond chasing aesthetic trends.

The Economics of Transformation: Spatial Value Calculation

Expand Furniture’s pricing reflects engineering complexity. The Expanse Inverse Murphy Bed starts at $3,145. The Box Coffee Curve lists at $2,495. The Compatto Revolving system reaches $6,495. These aren’t budget furniture prices. However, the value proposition shifts when considering spatial economics rather than simple furniture cost.

A studio apartment in a major market paying $2,500 monthly rent allocates roughly $3.33 per square foot per month. Furniture that effectively doubles the functional use of 100 square feet delivers $333 monthly spatial value, or nearly $4,000 annually. The Box Coffee Curve pays for itself in spatial value within eight months if it enables keeping a smaller apartment rather than upgrading to accommodate both coffee and dining tables.

The direct-to-consumer model helps manage costs that would balloon through traditional retail channels. Furniture stores typically apply 50-100% markups on wholesale prices. Eliminating this layer keeps prices accessible beyond pure luxury markets while supporting the engineering investment required for reliable transformation mechanisms. The company maintains warehouses across three continents, including three U.S. locations, addressing logistics challenges that often plague online furniture sales.

Quality Backed by Real-World Validation

Expand Furniture’s commitment to quality reveals itself in craftsmanship details and warranty coverage. The Box Coffee Curve features hand-cut, shaped, and polished oak fluting with visible tool marks and grain variation that only appear in actual wood worked by skilled artisans. The Expanse Inverse uses one-piece welded bed frames that eliminate weak points, with hidden pistons and invisible hardware throughout. These choices receive backing through a lifetime warranty on telescopic table mechanisms and five-year coverage store-wide on all hardware parts.

The 1,473 Facebook reviews at 96% recommendation rate validate this approach. That volume suggests sustained satisfaction rather than initial purchase enthusiasm. The furniture transforms as promised, mechanisms remain reliable through repeated use, and transformation friction stays low enough that customers actually use features rather than abandoning them. Transformation demonstration videos on TikTok and Instagram generate substantial engagement, with 15-second clips communicating entire value propositions more effectively than traditional product descriptions.

Installation requirements deserve honest acknowledgment. The Expanse Inverse takes approximately five hours with two people and requires strong walls with proper anchoring. The Compatto Revolving system requires serious installation commitment due to quality materials and wall anchoring for pivot points. Expand provides written and video installation guides with available video assistance, acknowledging installation challenges rather than pretending transformation furniture mounts as easily as hanging pictures.

Where Expand Goes From Here

The contrast between Expand’s table and bed innovations versus their seating offerings reveals opportunity. Their nano chairs serve basic function but lack the transformation sophistication defining their core products. What would an Expand chair look like with the same iterative attention as the Expanse Inverse Murphy Bed?

The furniture industry moves slowly compared to consumer electronics. A five-year development cycle would seem glacial in tech but represents rapid iteration in furniture. This creates opportunities for companies willing to invest in solving real spatial problems rather than chasing aesthetic trends. Expand Furniture’s direct-to-consumer feedback loop and willingness to spend years developing products positions them for continued refinement across categories where transformation serves genuine needs rather than offering novelty for its own sake.

The post Adaptive Design Meets Everyday Life: Expand Furniture’s Ingenious Solution Pieces first appeared on Yanko Design.

How 1,850 Square Feet Feels Like A Japanese Sanctuary In Cupertino

In a quiet Cupertino neighborhood, just miles from Apple’s sprawling campus, SHED Architecture & Design has created something exciting, a home that whispers rather than shouts, finding tranquility in one of the world’s most dynamic regions. The Cupertino Courtyard House stands as a masterful example of how Japanese design principles can breathe new life into California modernism.

Nestled among Mission and Spanish Colonial-style homes near the city’s iconic Eichler district, this 1,850-square-foot residence manages to feel both timeless and distinctly contemporary. The architects faced a unique challenge: how to honor local architectural traditions while creating something entirely new for a young family seeking both privacy and connection to nature.

Designer: SHED Architecture & Design

The Heart of the Home

The answer lies in the home’s beating heart. It is a central landscaped courtyard that serves as the organizing principle for the entire design. Drawing inspiration from Japanese garden traditions, this outdoor room becomes the meditative core around which all interior spaces revolve. Each room opens toward this garden sanctuary, creating what the architects describe as “a quiet rhythm between interior and exterior.”

From the street, the home presents a respectful face to its neighbors with white stucco walls that echo surrounding houses. However, the second level reveals the home’s modern character through striking black shou sugi ban wood cladding, a nod to Japanese building traditions that adds both beauty and durability. This stepped massing isn’t merely aesthetic; it’s a thoughtful response to strict local zoning requirements that transforms constraint into architectural opportunity.

Material Poetry and Mindful Living

Natural materials tell the story throughout the home. Cedar screens filter light and create privacy, while deep overhangs cast contemplative shadows that shift with the sun’s path. Wood, plaster, and stone introduce warmth and tactility, creating what SHED describes as “a continuous dialogue with the surrounding vegetation.”

The interior layout reflects a philosophy of mindful living. Traditional doors give way to sliding panels that encourage fluid movement between spaces. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside, flooding living areas with natural light while maintaining visual connections to the courtyard gardens.

Sustainable Innovation and Collaborative Excellence

Sustainability runs deeper than surface choices. The home achieves net-positive energy status, demonstrating that environmental responsibility and architectural beauty can work hand in hand. This isn’t green design as an afterthought; it’s integrated into every decision from orientation to material selection. What makes the Cupertino Courtyard House special isn’t any single element but rather how everything works together.

SHED Architecture has created a home that feels like a retreat without being removed from the world. It’s a place where a family can find moments of calm in the midst of Silicon Valley’s relentless pace. Built by Art of Construction with structural engineering by Todd Perbix and photography by Ethan Gordon, the project represents collaboration at its finest. The result is a home that proves contemporary architecture can be both innovative and deeply rooted, modern and timeless, a gentle revolution in residential design that speaks to our fundamental need for both shelter and serenity.

The post How 1,850 Square Feet Feels Like A Japanese Sanctuary In Cupertino first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Futuristic Car Design Looks Like It Escaped From a Cyberpunk Movie

Blade Runner meets Bonneville. Godwin Smith’s DIESELSTAR concept slams that wedge-shaped ethos from the 1970s into a dystopian future, where speed isn’t just a thrill but a design philosophy. This car looks like it was extruded from a block of aluminum by a machine with zero patience for curves. The cockpit is a slit, the wheels are half-hidden, and the rear end exposes its mechanical guts like a challenge. It’s a land-bound projectile, built for straight-line domination and nothing else.

The DIESELSTAR’s silhouette is pure Marcello Gandini if he’d been fed a steady diet of cyberpunk anime and land speed record lore. The Stratos Zero’s wedge is there, but Smith cranks it up, stripping away even the slightest hint of organic shaping. What’s left is a machine that looks like it belongs in a world where aesthetics are dictated by function, where every panel and seam exists to cheat the wind or house something mechanical. The cockpit is little more than a slit in the bodywork, the wheels are half-swallowed by the chassis, and the rear end exposes its guts like a statement of intent. This thing doesn’t just look fast. It looks like it was reverse-engineered from a speed record.

Designers: Godwin Smith, Nicolas Studio & Thomas Fred

The DIESELSTAR sits low, really low, with a roof height that wouldn’t embarrass a Formula 1 car. The width is exaggerated, stretching out like it’s permanently bracing for a high-speed corner, even though we all know this thing is built for dead-straight supremacy. The overhangs are minimal, almost nonexistent, which pushes the wheels to the absolute corners and amplifies that planted, ready-to-pounce stance. And then there’s the length, which feels stretched just enough to accommodate whatever turbine or electric madness is lurking under that flat, featureless hood. It’s a ratio game, and Smith plays it like a veteran, balancing aggression with an almost architectural sense of scale.

The details are where the DIESELSTAR stops being a retro-futurist fantasy and starts feeling like a plausible machine. Take the lighting, for example. Up front, there’s a row of thin, rectangular LEDs embedded into a black panel, a design choice that’s equal parts minimalist and menacing. Out back, the taillights are two razor-thin purple strips that look like they were lifted straight from a synthwave album cover. They’re not just there to look cool, though. The positioning and shape suggest they double as aerodynamic elements, guiding airflow around the rear wheels. Even the “DIESELSTAR” typography, stenciled along the side in blocky, no-nonsense letters, feels like it was chosen for its ability to disrupt airflow as little as possible. This is a car where every millimeter counts.

Then there’s the exposed rear mechanics, a detail that’s equal parts functional and theatrical. It’s a callback to the golden age of land speed cars, where engines and drivetrains were often left bare, partly out of necessity and partly as a middle finger to convention. Here, it serves as a reminder that this isn’t a production car meant to coddle its occupants. It’s a prototype, a testbed, a machine built to push limits and then shatter them. The visible suspension components and drive shafts aren’t just for show; they’re a declaration that this car is more about engineering prowess than passenger comfort. You don’t climb into the DIESELSTAR. You strap in and hold on.

Of course, the elephant in the room is whether something like this could ever exist outside of a render. The answer is complicated. The DIESELSTAR’s design is extreme, but not impossible. The lack of traditional grilles or air intakes suggests an electric or turbine-powered drivetrain, which aligns with the current push toward alternative propulsion in high-performance machines. The aerodynamic purity of the shape would make it a nightmare for city driving but a dream on a high-speed run. And while the exposed mechanics might raise eyebrows in a production car, they’re not out of place in a prototype or a one-off land speed challenger. If anything, the DIESELSTAR feels like a dare, a challenge to the automotive world to stop playing it safe and start building machines that look like they’re from the future again.

The post This Futuristic Car Design Looks Like It Escaped From a Cyberpunk Movie first appeared on Yanko Design.

B&O’s 100th Birthday Gift: Three Heritage Audio Icons

There’s something undeniably romantic about a brand that’s been around for a full century. Bang & Olufsen, the Danish audio company that’s made us swoon over beautiful speakers since 1925, just released its Centennial Collection, and honestly, these three pieces are making me reconsider my entire budget.

The company marked its 100th anniversary with the launch of a trio of special edition products that pay homage to its design heritage, and every detail feels intentional, from the vintage-inspired colorways to the commemorative touches that remind you you’re holding something special.

Designer: Bang & Olufsen

Let’s start with the Beoplay H100 headphones, which might just be the most gorgeous pair of cans I’ve seen this year. The H100 comes in a muted Century Brown finish, accented by a Century Red leather headband and Century Blue detailing. It’s like wearing a piece of mid-century modern furniture on your head, but in the best possible way. These aren’t your standard wireless headphones. They’re furnished with 40mm custom-made titanium drivers housed behind aluminium grills, plus Dolby Atmos capabilities and advanced noise cancelling. Bang & Olufsen actually claims these are still the best headphones they’ve ever created, which is saying something for a company with nearly a century of audio expertise.

Then there’s the Beosound A5, the portable speaker that’s giving major vintage radio vibes. The Century Weave comes fitted with a paper raffia weave in beige and chestnut brown, designed to reimagine the chequered speaker grills of the 1950s and emulate the aesthetics of Bang & Olufsen’s earliest radios. I’m obsessed with how they took something so nostalgic and made it feel completely contemporary. The speaker features a Century Weave pattern across its grille, offset by brushed aluminum framing, while its strap and cable are finished in matching red and blue tones. It’s portable audio that looks more like an art piece you’d proudly display.

The showstopper, though, is definitely the Beosound A9, the largest piece in the collection. The A9 arrives in Century Blue and features Kvadrat’s Centennial Cadence fabric alongside a natural aluminum ring and brushed legs, with details that deliberately echo B&O products from the 1980s. If you’re not familiar with the A9, picture a massive circular speaker that’s immediately recognizable and completely unlike anything else on the market. Thanks to its replaceable, modular design and updatable software, it’s been designed to be fully future-proof. In a world of planned obsolescence, that commitment to longevity feels almost radical.

What really gets me about this collection is the thoughtfulness behind every choice. Each item bears a commemorative “A never failing will to create only the best,” the message attributed to the company’s founders that ties these modern pieces back to Bang & Olufsen’s roots in precision engineering and minimalist design. It’s not just anniversary merch. It’s a genuine reflection on what the brand has always stood for.

The pricing is expectedly high-end. The Beosound A5 Century Weave is $1,750, the Beoplay A9 Century Blue is $5,500, and the Beoplay H100 Century Brown is $1,500. Yes, these are investment pieces. But for collectors who appreciate design history, or anyone who wants something that feels genuinely special rather than just another tech gadget, this collection hits different.

What I love most is how Bang & Olufsen managed to honor its past without getting stuck there. These aren’t reproductions or nostalgic recreations. They’re current, cutting-edge products dressed in colors and textures that nod to the brand’s greatest design moments. It’s the kind of anniversary collection that feels earned, celebrating 100 years not by resting on past glories but by showing they’re still creating products worth collecting.

The post B&O’s 100th Birthday Gift: Three Heritage Audio Icons first appeared on Yanko Design.