This Grand Piano Has a 20″ Touchscreen, and a Design Worthy Of A Supercar Showroom

The grand piano has remained visually unchanged for generations, its acquainted silhouette a fixture in live performance halls and residing rooms worldwide. Mohammad Limucci noticed this consistency otherwise. Rather than accepting the standard kind as immutable, he acknowledged a possibility to evolve the instrument’s aesthetic whereas preserving its acoustic soul. His creation, the Porochista Piano, applies automotive design rules to classical craftsmanship.

Measuring 8.7 by 6.2 toes, Porochista combines glass, metallic, and matte black composites in flowing natural shapes paying homage to Luigi Colani’s biomorphic philosophy. The rear part seems to drift, creating visible rigidity between sculptural ambition and structural stability. A big built-in touchscreen presents digital performance with out compromising the acoustic purity skilled pianists demand. This fusion of previous and new earned recognition on the A’ Design Award, the place judges appreciated its potential to draw trendy design fans whereas respecting the instrument’s heritage. Porochista suggests what custom may change into when filtered by means of up to date imaginative and prescient.

Designer: Mohammad Limucci

Designers slap touchscreens onto every little thing from fridges to toilet mirrors today, often with outcomes that make you query primary decision-making processes. A grand piano sporting what appears to be like like a 20-inch show feels like precisely that type of misguided pondering. But Limucci clearly studied how supercar producers like Pagani and Koenigsegg combine perform into kind, the place each curve serves each aerodynamic goal and visible drama. That swept-back lid with its silver trim may’ve been lifted from a hypercar’s energetic aero system. The base, with its angular cutouts and geometric voids, solves the everlasting design downside of constructing one thing huge really feel gentle with out really compromising structural integrity. The resolution right here includes precise engineering reasonably than visible tips.

The Colani affect runs deep, and anybody conversant in the German designer’s work will spot it instantly. Those seamless transitions between surfaces, the way in which arduous edges soften into natural curves, the sense that this object may obtain flight velocity when you simply gave it a runway. Colani designed every little thing from vans to cameras utilizing the identical biomorphic language, at all times asking why objects ought to have corners when nature abhors them. Limucci applies that pondering to an instrument that’s been geometrically inflexible because the 1700s. Production apparently requires CNC machining and molding methods borrowed from automotive manufacturing, which is smart given the compound curves concerned. You can’t slap veneer on particleboard and obtain types like these.

The touchscreen integration may’ve gone full sci-fi nightmare, all glowing edges and pulsing LEDs, however as a substitute it sits flush and purposeful. The digital options (recording, playback, animated notation show) tackle precise pianist wants reasonably than including gimmicks for advertising and marketing bullet factors. There’s even a hidden compartment up prime that slides out to carry sheet music, activated by touching a particular spot. That degree of element suggests somebody really thought of how musicians work together with their devices over hours of observe, not simply how the factor images for Instagram. The matte black end with these copper-toned pedal particulars seen by means of the bottom cutouts provides it presence with out screaming for consideration, which is tougher to attain than it sounds.

Tehran to Zagreb doesn’t seem to be an apparent design pipeline, however apparently that’s the place this idea gestated. Whether it ever reaches manufacturing stays the query no one’s answering but, although the A’ Design Award recognition actually helps with credibility. The manufacturing complexity alone suggests this gained’t be competing with Yamahas at your native music retailer. Still, seeing somebody lastly deal with piano design with the identical revolutionary power that automotive and shopper electronics take pleasure in feels overdue. Professional musicians deserve devices that match up to date areas with out trying like props from interval dramas.