Sound idea: Sony shows its thinking

Milan – Many at Milan Design Week show their latest products, carefully curated, exhibited and lit. That is especially true for big brands, buying in to the design world to enhance their brand’s cool and cachet.

In collaboration with British designers Jay Barber and Edward Osgerby, Japanese electronics giant Sony has chosen another route.

‘We wanted to do the opposite,’ Barber tells LS:N Global. ‘To show unfinished products. These aren’t even prototypes, they’re just experiments.’

Instead of launching products, Sony presented five concepts in a lab-like, almost colourless environment. In order to present the ideas in as neutral a zone as possible, this large box-shaped space near ZonaTortona was rendered almost anechoic – that is, soundless – by phalanxes of grey foam wedges on the floors, walls and ceilings.

The Monolithic Design presentation’s iconic piece looked like a single piece of thick, floor-mounted glass with no buttons or any decoration whatsoever: a huge TV that directly refers to the Leanomics trend LS:N Global described at this spring’s Trend Briefing.

There were also a number of experiments with sound, including a mahogany speaker, a speaker that offered listeners a personal ‘soundfield’ and visual sound furniture.

We’ll be exploring the project further in our Innovate section.