Most speakers are designed to disappear. They sit on a shelf, blend into a bookcase, or hide in a cabinet, quietly doing their job until you need them and then fading back into the background. M\u00e5rten Malmn\u00e4s, a graduate from the Ume\u00e5 Institute of Design, designed something that pushes back against all of that.<\/p>\n
The Beosound Tableau is a wall-mounted audio object developed in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. Malmn\u00e4s calls it \u201ca fireplace for music,\u201d an instrument not just for listening, but for living. The moment I read that, I had to stop. Because I\u2019ve never heard a speaker described that way before, and suddenly, I couldn\u2019t think of a more fitting comparison.<\/p>\n
Designer: M\u00e5rten Malmn\u00e4s<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Think about what a fireplace actually does. Yes, it produces heat, but that\u2019s almost beside the point. A fireplace creates presence. It becomes the thing a room organizes itself around. People pull their chairs toward it, conversations happen because of it, and its absence is genuinely felt. That\u2019s a completely different design brief than \u201cfits on your desk\u201d or \u201cconnects to your phone.\u201d<\/p>\n Malmn\u00e4s started the project with a design probe, a research method that explores the relationships people have with their homes, and from that came a set of experiments around values and behaviors. Eight experimental directions emerged from the ideation phase, spanning different input and output formats. Three of those directions clearly answered the design responsibilities he\u2019d set for the project, and their shared qualities pointed toward one resolved object.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where it gets interesting. The original concept for the Tableau was screen-based, but a method called Wizard of Oz testing, where a human simulates the system to observe how people actually interact with it, pushed the design somewhere more honest. The interaction model shifted from screens to navigation by sound. And the principle that came out of it became the foundation of the whole concept: the most honest interface for a music object is music itself.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a provocative idea. We\u2019ve spent years layering more and more visual UI on top of audio experiences. Every streaming service competes on the complexity of its recommendation algorithm, the visual polish of its playlist covers, the grid of album art. Malmn\u00e4s argued the opposite, that sound should speak for sound. The result is the Sonic Token, a physical object that mediates between the listener and the Tableau. Tactile, intentional, and completely different from scrolling a touchscreen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Tableau is positioned as a focal thing for the home. An object to gather around and tend to. That language is deliberate, and it\u2019s also a little radical. \u201cTending\u201d to an audio object implies care and attention, a relationship rather than a transaction. You don\u2019t tend to a Bluetooth speaker. You don\u2019t gather around an app.<\/p>\n Bang & Olufsen has always occupied a rare space in the audio world, where design and sound hold equal weight, and where a product can belong in a design museum and still deliver extraordinary sound. But even by B&O\u2019s standards, the Tableau concept asks a genuinely new question: what if the speaker were the focal point of the room, rather than just a feature of it?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n There are fair questions about how a concept like this survives beyond a graduate show. The hands-on, material-driven process Malmn\u00e4s used, with 1:1 mock-ups and rigorous testing of the Sonic Token\u2019s form and function, suggests this isn\u2019t a vague idea dressed up in renders. It was built and tested as a real object. Whether it eventually reaches production or stays as a collaborative concept between a student designer and one of the world\u2019s most revered audio brands is another matter.<\/p>\n But the value of the Beosound Tableau isn\u2019t only in whether it ships. It\u2019s in the question it refuses to let go of: why have we settled for speakers that ask nothing of us? The alternative, a speaker that earns its place on the wall, makes music feel like a gathering, and treats sound like something worth being present for, sounds like exactly what the living room has been missing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The post Bang & Olufsen\u2019s New Speaker Concept Is a Ritual, Not a Device<\/a> first appeared on Yanko Design<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most speakers are designed to disappear. They sit on a shelf, blend into a bookcase, or hide in a cabinet, quietly doing their job until you need them and then fading back into the background. M\u00e5rten Malmn\u00e4s, a graduate from the Ume\u00e5 Institute of Design, designed something that pushes back against all of that. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n