Crafting Sound: The Rise of Speakers as Functional Art

Across design, everyday technologies are being reconsidered as collectible objects. Lighting has already shifted from hidden utility to sculptural centerpiece. Now, speakers are taking a similar turn. Instead of receding into the background, they are built to stand as tactile works that shape the atmosphere and character of a space.

For collectors and interior designers, the appeal is immediate. These speakers strike a balance between technical rigor and the weight of material, process, and narrative. Listening becomes an integral part of the design experience, and design becomes an integral part of the listening experience.

Crafting Sound brings together eight studios working at this intersection. Their approaches range from reclaimed plywood systems with professional-grade performance, to mycelium structures grown into sculptural enclosures, to ceramic horns engineered for clarity. Each speaker is treated not only as an instrument for sound but as functional art. Together, they mark a shift in how sound is understood: not as background, but as a presence to be seen and heard.

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Lucas Muñoz Muñoz, Madrid, Spain

Through a practice that bridges conceptual inquiry and hands-on craft, Lucas Muñoz Muñoz explores the material and functional potential of everyday objects. His career has taken him from Eindhoven to Madrid, with projects ranging from furniture to large-scale installations. Sustainability and circular design are central to his work, reflected in awards from Dezeen, FRAME, and ICON.

His S.S. Sound System series embodies this ethos. Built from reclaimed plywood and assembled without glue, each cabinet relies on heat-blackened screws and recycled textile panels for acoustic dampening. Technical specifications are uncompromising: multi-channel setups, BEYMA high-end speakers, bluetooth codecs supporting lossless audio, and wattage levels designed for both clarity and force.

Muñoz traces this pursuit back to his “clubbing and raving ages,” when sound was visceral and formative. He recalls testing his first speaker with nothing more than a tuning wave, a reminder of how technical process and emotional connection often overlap. “Sound quality dictates aesthetics in this case,” he explains, highlighting how engineering decisions shaped the final form.

He imagines his speakers in homes, galleries, and performance spaces alike, carrying the atmosphere of the club into new contexts. For him, these objects transmit not only music, but the energy of lived experience.

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Pol Agusti, Mexico City, Mexico

For Pol Agusti, designing speakers began in a moment of farewell. “I think it all started when I was creating a funerary space to say goodbye to a friend,” he recalls. He had arranged altars, seating, and lighting, but still felt something was missing: “There was a need for something that could bring music into the space, something that could hold and carry the sound of that moment.”

That impulse led him to the Wua-g I and II speakers, each formed from the guaje, or gourd, a vessel with deep roots in Latin America. “The guaje—or gourd—is an object that has been used for centuries throughout Latin America. It’s a natural vessel… and carries strong ceremonial associations.”

The biggest challenge, Agusti notes, was “bringing together two worlds that rarely meet: the artisanal and the technological.” The joy came in discovering how the gourd’s hollow shape gave sound “a magical quality, as if it had always been meant to be a vessel for sound.” The first sound he played was a song by Luedji Luna. “It felt important that the first sound to emerge from the gourd be a woman’s voice—soft yet powerful, like an invocation.”

“I’d love for those who use these pieces to feel connected to the ancestral roots of music,” he says. For Agusti, these speakers are vessels of memory as much as they are objects of sound.

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Concept Object, London, UK

For Maddie and Jack Moolark of Concept Object, the speaker is both sculpture and instrument. They describe their work simply: “Concept Objects prioritize a hands-on approach to sound. Sound is a great cheat code for making people feel something.”

Their OBJ_CX speaker brings together birch plywood, noise-suppressing foam, and reimagined coaxial components for clarity and power. “We work with Volt, the UK’s leading audio company,” they note, “combining different systems to create unique experiences.”

The biggest joy came not from the construction, but from the act of listening. “Delivering and experiencing our sound systems is the most important part. Like they are rediscovering their favourite music again.” When they first tested the system, they chose Leif Vollebekk’s Feel: “I felt like having a cry.” They imagine the speakers in “creative places, spaces that inspire art/life.”

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Mycoaudio, Montreal, Canada

Designer Antoine Provencher of Mycoaudio comes from a background in electro-acoustics. “I come from sound, so the shift was learning from other design practices,” he explains. His work fuses ceramics, mycelium, and wood into sculptural speaker systems.

He identifies the challenge as “marrying tight acoustic tolerances with living materials,” but the results were rewarding. “The fruition of this project is the most surprising joy,” he writes.

The 12I2 system uses a powerful neodymium woofer and ceramic horn driver. His Ek1 and R1 bookshelf speakers bring in ceramic shells and mycelium insulation. Provencher frames his process around music itself: “It’s the root and the reason.”

The first sound he tested was “a frequency sweep, for testing the frequency response.” He sees his speakers in “homes, galleries, cafes… but I would also love to see them in more experimental music venues.”

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10th Floor Studio, San Francisco, US

10th Floor Studio, founded by Jerome Tavé and Kyle Lawson, merges material experimentation with ecological thinking. Since 2018, their practice has centered on fungi-inspired design, where mycelium becomes a collaborator rather than a medium. Their work critiques anthropocentrism and proposes futures where humanity is integrated more closely with other lifeforms.

Their Hyphal Fidelity speakers embody this vision. Grown into aluminum frames, reishi mycelium creates sculptural, textured enclosures that absorb resonance while holding speaker components. Similarly, the Boombox II uses in-house cultivated mycelium fed with wood waste, paired with aluminum frames and expressive fruiting bodies.

For Tavé and Lawson, sound is part of a broader ecological narrative. The speakers are not only tools for audio but also collaborative objects shaped by human and fungal growth. They encourage new ways of thinking about coexistence, material life, and design futures.

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Voidfill Studio, Brooklyn, US

Founded by Sebastian Bidegain, Voidfill Studio treats design as a laboratory. With a background in sculpture, technology, and natural sciences, Bidegain’s practice moves between functional objects, jewelry, and experimental electronics. Curiosity and play are central to his approach, where objects are engineered as much as they are imagined.

His Gummy Speaker exemplifies this spirit. Portable, battery-powered, and hand-built from plastic, epoxy clay, fiber tape, and resin, Gummy is as much a character as an object. Painted with acrylic and embedded with Bluetooth technology, it is designed to be used in motion, untethered from traditional audio setups.

Bidegain describes his process as “It is a dance in between performance and forms. The speaker is fragile and intentional, so tactility plays a role.” In this case, the emphasis is on joy, portability, and tactility. Gummy is a reminder that high-end design can be both serious and playful, functioning as a sculptural conversation piece as well as a functional speaker.

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Panorammma Atelier, Mexico City, Mexico

Led by Maika Palazuelos, Panorammma Atelier moves fluidly between disciplines. The studio focuses on objects that intervene in daily life, not as static pieces but as actors in lived scenarios. Their work is grounded in memory, fiction, and performance, designed to reshape how we experience the ordinary.

Their Bronze Sculptural Singing-Stone Speaker exemplifies this philosophy. Cast from bronze in the shape of a mountain stone, it references both ancient sculptural practices and modern audio technology. The piece invites listeners to experience sound as material, recalling the tradition of pressing one’s ear to stone to sense its hidden structures. “When sculpting in stone, it is common practice to press one’s ear against the material while lightly tapping it. The sounds and vibrations can reveal properties in the medium that are hidden from sight.”

Bronze has long been prized for resonance, used in instruments like bells and cymbals. In this piece, it becomes the foundation for a domestic sound object. For Palazuelos, it is as much about listening to the material as listening to music, creating a conversation between design history and contemporary audio.

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L’Impatience, Kingston, NY, US

Founded by French ceramicists Benedicte and Jerome Leclere, L’Impatience merges backgrounds in music production, art direction, and ceramics. Their work is rooted in sculptural form and material precision, with a focus on creating objects that elevate daily rituals.

Their Mutual Core speaker system is the only loudspeaker on the market built around ceramic as a core acoustic material. Each horn is slip-cast in stoneware, then glazed or hand-carved to achieve mineral-like textures that remain inert during playback. They describe the process as a pursuit of restraint and clarity. “We wanted to design with the most elemental and durable materials we could find, and let them speak for themselves.” Each horn is slip-cast in stoneware, then carved or glazed to remain acoustically inert. Paired with oak or walnut cabinets, the system balances warmth with precision.

The ceramic horns are paired with oak or walnut cabinets, finished with matching ceramic feet and tags. L’Impatience describes their process as guided by purity and restraint. The result is a system that offers both sculptural presence and acoustic excellence, designed for interiors where sound and material beauty are inseparable.

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Western Acoustics, Brooklyn, US

Founded in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood and now based in Brooklyn, Western Acoustics approaches speaker design through the lens of engineering precision and cultural awareness. The studio’s ethos is grounded in simplicity, refinement, and patience. Rather than chasing trends, they dedicate years to evolving a small range of designs, guided by the belief that speakers should integrate seamlessly into daily life—offering calm presence without sacrificing performance. Inspirations from Donald Judd, Brancusi, and International Typographic Style shape the restrained forms, while a steady process of improvement defines their craft.

The Type 2 system embodies their “wholistic” philosophy: neither purely an object of sound nor of form, but a balance of both. The cabinets, carefully built with attention to clean edges despite the challenges of woodworking, are paired with components chosen for scale and clarity. Magnetic grills snap satisfyingly into place, binding posts are selected for tactility as much as function, and the woofer ensures a sound that feels larger than its compact body. The result is a speaker designed to live in the home, where its visual restraint enhances a room while delivering refined, uncolored playback. For Western Acoustics, design and music are inseparable, each amplifying the other in service of everyday listening.

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Making Sound Visible. Again.

The eight studios in Crafting Sound show how the speaker is evolving from a hidden appliance into a collectible design object. Their works reflect diverse approaches, from club-inspired plywood systems to gourd shells, bio-material experiments, and ceramic horns. Each demonstrates that sound can be treated not only as a technical pursuit but as a material, cultural, and aesthetic one.

For collectors and interior designers, this shift represents a new category of functional art, where high-end audio stands alongside furniture, lighting, and objects as part of a curated environment. Crafting Sound demonstrates that the speaker is no longer something to hide, but something to live with, see, and experience.

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