It might look a little bit like someone caged HAL in a wooden frame, but this is in fact an elegant speaker, where a spherical sound source sits suspended from its own cubic frame, so you can see how sound forces it to move.
Designed by Giorgio Bonaguro and Juan Soriano Blanco, the Vitruvio speaker certainly has lofty inspiration: it is, apparently, inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing. You know, the iconic image — and perhaps self-portrait — where man is spread-eagled on the page for all to see. The speaker sprawls out to the corners of the cube in much the same way.
In terms of technical details, the spherical speaker — crafted from metal or ceramic — is attached to the eight corners of the cube by rubber wires along the diagonals, which allow it to move fore and aft, as the designers explain:
The ball can move, due to the soundwaves, giving to the eye the impression of the “movement” of sound.
The speaker takes a simple auxiliary in-feed, allowing you to plug any device into it, and the frame can be made of solid wood or metal. It’s currently still a concept, the speaker will be presented at Launch Pad at Wanted Design NYC later this month. [Giorgio Bonaguro and Juan Soriano Blanco via Mocoloco]