By bighughhef
As two completely different brands and companies; Sonos, located in the home entertainment industries producing smart speakers and IKEA which I can only assume that everyone know of, decided to merge together and design speakers that also functions as furniture in your home. They called the products “Symfonisk” which translates into English as “symphonic”.
The goal was to bring “the sound of a full orchestra into the dining room without a speaker”. Also, Sonos was clear that they didn’t want to make compromises with the quality of the sound, since they have a reputation that their speakers bring excellent sound quality. At first thought this sounds like an excellent idea, to make speakers camouflaged as furniture is many home designers wet dream. They decided to make a table lamp as well as a bookshelf speaker that you can also mount on the wall and use as an independent shelf. Both speakers are also capable to “talk” with your other Sonos speakers in your home wirelessly which was a “must” feature for Sonos since their whole business idea relies on that you can build your own home speaker system bit by bit, also that you can play the same music at the same time in different rooms.
At first, the industrial designers at both Sonos and IKEA had to learn how to communicate with each other in a matter that both parties understood clearly what the other part was saying. In addition, both IKEA and Sonos has their own design that they want to reflect in the end products, and I think that they sort of made it. The knitted pattern on the speakers is very IKEA and Sonos, but as you can see on the picture, it’s not the most esthetic furniture out there, in fact I think the lamp is quite unpleasant to look at.
I wish both the speaker and the lampshade was thinner and maybe taller. But maybe they have
to look like that since they didn’t want to compromise with the sound quality.
The wall mounted shelf/speaker is a good idea and I would certainly consider buying this in
my own home.
At first thought, I think that making speakers as furniture is a bright idea, and I can understand that for industrial designers originally working to make speakers and furniture isolated, that suddenly have to work together, can be challenging. But both parties have a clean and minimalistic design and the end product reflects that. The lamp is in my opinion a bit to bulged, but maybe that changes in their next products. The designers have certainly more feedback to work on after all.
Making sense of art and design industries 