Lighting & Optical Design
The light is not where you expect.
The Castiglioni brothers’ Taccia looks like an oversized glass bowl on a column. Its real intelligence is the route light takes through it.
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Cameras & Ways of Seeing
More film, not less picture.
Hasselblad’s XPan makes a panorama by exposing a wider area of film. It offers a different proposition from cropping the top and bottom of a conventional frame.
Furniture & Industrial Imagination
A tractor seat, reconsidered.
The Castiglioni brothers’ Mezzadro moves an agricultural silhouette into the home. Its wit depends on how the parts work together, not simply where the seat came from.
Electronic Instruments & Musical Culture
The drum machine that became a language.
Roland’s TR-808 matters because musicians found a future in sounds that did not convincingly imitate an acoustic drum kit.
Audio & Acoustic Engineering
The shape of a sound problem.
Bowers & Wilkins did not give Nautilus a spiral simply to make it memorable. The shape follows an unusually ambitious attempt to deal with unwanted sound.
Kitchen Objects & Useful Mechanisms
The handle that closes the pot.
Richard Sapper’s Alessi 9090 makes a familiar coffee ritual slightly different. Its handle is part of the closing mechanism, not just something to hold.
Optics & Continuing Systems
A new lens for an old language.
Leica’s first 35mm Noctilux brings an unusually wide aperture to a familiar field of view. The more interesting continuity is the system around it.
Furniture & Material Evolution
The chair that had to change.
The Panton Chair survived as an idea partly because its material did not stay the same. Its history includes a failure worth understanding.
Lighting & Practical Ingenuity
The hole in the marble.
Flos Arco puts overhead light where there is no ceiling fitting. Its most revealing detail may be the hole through its heavy marble base.
Analogue Recording & Factory Restoration
The workshop behind the reels.
The Revox B77 makes recording physically visible. Its stronger claim to longevity lies beyond the turning reels, in a manufacturer that still restores its older machines.
Optical Instruments & Assisted Observation
The binoculars that share a discovery.
Swarovski Optik’s AX Visio combines a real optical view with digital identification. Its most human feature may be the arrows that help someone else find what you have just seen.
Expressive Keyboards & Musical Gesture
The note does not end at the key.
Expressive E’s Osmose keeps the familiar piano keyboard but makes pressure and sideways movement part of the sound. The instrument rewards what happens after a note begins.