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Consumer technology isn’t known to age well. A faster chip, a new wireless protocol, thinner bezels or smaller form factors are viewed with suspicion as consumers expect them to soon be deemed obsolete. There are, however, a few objects that continue to buck the trend. Take the 1950s-inspired Smeg FAB28 fridge from the ’90s that continues to look contemporary.
German designer Dieter Rams’ principle of “good design is as little design as possible” led Braun through decades of industrial design dominance, and even inspired the Steve Jobs and Jony Ive partnership at Apple. These are the gizmos that continue to rule, thanks to their cutting-edge engineering and design.
Having earned its reputation in the professional music production hardware space, Sweden’s Teenage Engineering’s first big hit, the OP-1 synthesiser, was launched in 2010. Their newest object, APC-2, has nothing to do with synths. The 140-kilogramme vinyl-cutting lathe, built with Supersense (an Austrian analogue specialist brand), turns a digital file into a playable record in real time. This minimalist yet theatrical design gadget engraves live audio directly on to a physical disc in real time, allowing literally anyone to make their own vinyl discs.
Even as the world’s largest manufacturer of screens and displays, Samsung’s own tellies weren’t always on people’s bucket lists. Until 2017, when they invented a whole new category of the ‘Art TV’. When switched off, The Frame transforms into an artwork. This year’s lineup has an upgraded Glare Free coating, and a 98-inch Super Big Art TV, Samsung’s largest gallery scale frame yet. Motion and ambient-light sensors still wake the screen only when someone is in the room and dim it to match outside conditions.
Dyson is synonymous with transforming air currents and thermal dynamics into sculptural forms. Its lesser known SKU, the Solarcycle Morph, applies this engineering ethos to indoor lighting. It features an articulated optical head that manoeuvres 360 degrees, transitioning from a focussed task light into a soft, ambient glow. It also uses a precise daylight-tracking algorithm to alter its colour temperature and brightness, mirroring the exact sun cycle of the local coordinates. When docked, the optical head transforms the perforated aluminum stem into a glowing, comforting amber column that naturally reduces sleep disrupting blue light.
Long after the backlash has subsided, fans may just start digesting the cabin of the Ferrari Luce. The product of a five-year collaboration with Ferrari’s design studio and Jony Ive-fronted LoveFrom, the cabin is ambitious. It trades touchscreen interiors for analogue dials, mechanical toggles, and a steering-column-mounted instrument cluster that draws on old aircraft and helicopter avionics. With this, Ferrari has set the template for an electric era that expresses itself through haute craftsmanship and technological sophistication.
Bang & Olufen’s newest piece takes its Scandinavian industrial design philosophy outdoors by pairing a precision engineered aluminium sphere with a monolithic quartzite plinth, designed to be viewed as landscape architecture rather than garden tech. Developed with Italian stone house Antolini, the Beosound Haven integrates the sphere directly into monolithic blocks of Antolini Taj Mahal quartzite. The stone’s density, grain, and matte texture are unified with the acoustic housing to neutralise vibrations the enemy of accurate audio reproduction.