London – Sound system brand Sonos has built a home-from-home café and event space in London’s creative district.
Sonos Studio London is the US hifi brand’s second permanent space, after the gallery and music venue it opened in Los Angeles in 2012. But whereas the Los Angeles studio was a room for events and little more, the London venue comes with every modern convenience and function. The café downstairs in the two-storey building provides free wifi, while upstairs a larger sitting room verges onto a workshop area and two luxuriously fitted private listening rooms.
Each detail of the new studio, which Sonos plans to use as an event space for talks and free gigs, has been carefully selected to reflect the brand’s connection to music. Even the floor was made with acoustically sensitive wood reclaimed from the former BBC Broadcasting House.
‘Everything we do is about the home – it’s about making the home sound great,’ Tom Panton, director of Sonos Studio London, tells LS:N Global. ‘We don’t go and sponsor big festivals and artist tours. If you build a building like this then it becomes your home in London… people respect that commitment.’
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