Wireless speakers for smartphones are all the rage. Italian designer Denis Santachiara has come up with a rather immobile but extremely stylish solution for enjoying ambient sound from your cell phone: The passive amplifier made of Carrara marble, which combines alphorn, park bench and modern aesthetics, is our sculpture of the month. With the right budget, you can now order your personal Wunderhorn online.
a passive amplifier made of Carrara marble. (Screenshot: YouTube/Marmomac)
Has redefined "rock music": Designer Denis Santachiara explains his Play Panca concept, a passive amplifier made of Carrara marble, in the video. (Screenshot: YouTube/Marmomac)
The Play Panca sound furniture weighs 600 kilograms, is 2.5 meters long, up to 60 centimetres wide and 90 centimetres high. The exquisite chaise longue for wealthy music lovers was made possible by CNC machining. (Photo: Luca Morandini)
August 2017: "Rocksound". (Screenshot: cyrcus.it)
Not quite cheap, but a real eye-catcher and listener: the winner of the "Icon Award 2016" can be ordered online at cyrcus.it for 19,000 euros. (Screenshot: cyrcus.it)
Simply place your cell phone on the horn, press play and it rocks out of the marble tube: Play Panca is a sculpture, design piece and everyday object. Conceived by the renowned Italian designer Denis Santachiara, whose works can be seen in the New York MoMA, the Japanese MOMAT and the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, among others, the lithophone is manufactured by the Costa Paolo Co. The extravagant piece of sound furniture is made of 600 kilograms of Carrara marble and, at 2.5 meters long, offers space for three people if you don’t want to enjoy it alone as a chaise longue.
Denis Santachiara is fascinated by the new possibilities of stone processing and shaping that CAD applications and CNC machines offer. “I used digital technology for the project, because the object could really only be made with it,” he says. “But I wanted to bring something more into it – namely sound. Because sound has a significant impact on these materials. They can easily be used to make loudspeakers.” (Watch the full interview with Denis Santachiara here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJnN3oomk8c )
However, the quality of materials, processing and artistic genius comes at a price: a Play Panca costs 19,000 euros when ordered online. If you have the means and have fallen in love with the unusual concept, you can find the online store here: https://cyrcus.it/products/play-panca-sculpure-by-denis-santachiara
Last year, Santachiara won the Icon Award of the “Italian Stone Theater” at Marmomac with this study. His work is therefore the poster motif for the upcoming edition of the leading trade fair. Once again this year, there will be plenty of art to admire and prizes to be awarded for outstanding achievements – find out more in the big Marmomac preview in STEIN 09/17, which will be published on August 22, 2017.
To coincide with Marmomac 2017, we present the important Italian natural stone regions of South Tyrol, Verona and Carrara. Further information on the three-part STEIN series “Italy’s classics” here