Is it a piece of technology, a work of art, a giant coin turned on its side or an alien object landed from somewhere else? Conceived by Cypriot-born, London-based designer Michael Anastassiades, the Beosound Edge from Danish sound experts Bang & Olufsen is a new, minimally-designed, wireless speaker that invites you to interact with it.
It doesn’t really look like a speaker at all and that’s exactly the point – the Beosound Edge offers great sound, but more than than, it’s for those of us who want technology to look the part and fit seamlessly into the design of our homes. It’s all part of a movement I’ve seen towards minimal technology that blends into the background and becomes part of the experience of living in a space. The simple, reductionist design doesn’t have any buttons, knobs or unnecessary superfluous details – the volume is in actual fact adjusted by rolling the speaker across the floor. Although it can also be mounted on a wall like a contemporary sculpture.
‘I constantly distil the original idea, removing layers upon layers. And what we manage to retain, is pure,’ says Michael Anastassiades.
The speaker is designed to respond to the force of your touch and it even illuminates when you approach it (tiny microscopic holes have been drilled into the aluminium to allow light to shine through and create discreet illuminated controls). A gentle tap on its curved, touch-sensitive surface and the volume goes up ever so slightly, a stronger nudge and the change in sound is more noticeable. But it won’t just keep rolling off and stop when it meets an obstruction; the speaker is calibrated to always return to its balanced centre.
The Beosound Edge currently comes with a matt black fabric cover, but Bang & Olufsen is planning to introduce new, on-trend colours over time. The result for the moment is mysterious and characterful, drawing you in out of curiosity. It’s like no speaker I’ve seen before.
To celebrate the recent launch, Anastassiades created a sound installation with composer Mauro Hertig at Brompton Design District for London Design Festival 2018. Titled, 1/6000 – the name derived from the probability of flipping a £1 coin and it landing on its edge – six of the speakers were installed in a minimal, white-washed, former bank on the Brompton Road, each playing a different part of a composition created specially for the event by Hertig. I sat down with Anastassiades to chat through the design and the story behind the Beosound Edge.
You’re well-known for your minimal lighting, what was it like designing a speaker?
It’s interesting because lighting is a very special kind of object because I’ve always said that light has to live most of its life when it’s off and perform when it’s off and only 20% of the time it’s actually on. And the two scenarios that you as a designer have to account for are very, very different and I think what is interesting about the speaker is that it also has a double life in that sense. It has to work as an abstract object when it’s off and it’s a different kind of object when it’s actually playing and performing, and when you interact with it. I think there is a similarity in the approaches, the starting point as a lighting designer is the same.
What is your perception of the way that the design of technology has changed in the home and how we live with sound now?
My approach to technology – I can only speak for myself – is very different in the sense that I am a person that actually feels very uncomfortable with technology around them in their living environment. I never have anything showing, I always have things in cupboards; all technological products are hidden away, my stereo system is hidden in a cupboard, ideally I would like to hide my TV away in a cupboard. But I actually decided to find a TV that is so discreet that it disappears in the setting because it’s on the floor.
So designing this speaker was quite an interesting challenge for me and a limitation of course because how do you communicate the idea that these objects need to be discreet and disappear in an interior. These were quite important points to start from; the idea of creating a monolithic object that doesn’t actually shout I’m a technology product.
What was the inspiration for the round shape of the Beosound Edge?
The brief said that the speaker had to be portable, meaning you could be able to transport it to different rooms, so the idea of incorporating movement and motion in the design came quite early on in my exploration process. So when I came up with the shape being a coin on its edge, it somehow felt like it was the right starting point. And then when I was invited to start giving basic functions by the operation of the speaker, from the speaker itself rather than through your mobile phone, the idea of the coin, the fact that you roll it in order to increase the sound or decrease the volume, made perfect sense.
How did the design process work with Bang & Olufsen?
They’re there to help you realise certain things, of course they’re the experts in terms of sound performance but then what you are expected to do as a designer is design a box to house these things. I wanted my contribution to go beyond that and actually have these gestures in the operation of the speaker.
Where do you see the Beosound Edge speaker being used?
I see it in homes, I always design things in the way that I live, because I live in a small house with small spaces, therefore that sense of intimacy is very present. I have a problem with speakers the size of doors, they’re completely out of scale with the environment. I would never buy a speaker just for its performance, primarily also from the way it looks.
So if all your technology is normally hidden away, would you have the Beosound Edge speaker in your own home?
This I would be happy to have out, but everything else lives in the cupboard!
Thank you very much to Michael Anastassiades for chatting to me. The BeoSound Edge is available now from www.bang-olufsen.com/edge and in Bang & Olufsen stores from the end of September, priced at £2,900.
All images courtesy Bang & Olufsen
