Senato Speaker hits all the right notes

Close up of gold speaker — Senato Hotel has reignited its design spark with stone specialist Pietre di Monitillo to produce a new piece, the Senato speaker

(Image credit: TBC)

The Senato Hotel has joined forces with stone specialist Pietre di Monitillo on a new piece for its guests to enjoy during their stay. The Senato speaker, unveiled this week, was developed by the hotel’s creative director, Pier Giorgio Lomascolo, in collaboration with designer Efrem Bonacina, the Puglia-based stone company and Milan’s Politecnico. ‘Senato speaker wishes to embody the beauty of the invisible, to provide weight to the majesty of good sound through noble materials,’ says Lomascolo.

This project follows the first collaboration with Senato Hotel Milano, which already features Monitillo’s iPhone ‘passive speaker’, OVO, in all of its superior rooms and junior suites. Carved out of a block of stone, the speaker works as an amplifier of sound thanks to its carefully-crafted internal structure of holes and bends, developed by Politecnico’s Design Lab with Lomascolo.

The new piece takes Lomascolo’s penchant for materiality and sound to a new direction. The Senato speaker is in fact equipped with Bowers & Wilkins CCM632 loudspeaker, encased within a grid-like structure featuring marble and brass-coated aluminium panels. The choice of materials is, as usual, key to the design: marble, on the one hand, is an ideal material to amplify sound waves, while metal is used to enhance crisp vibrations.

Green &amp; gold hanging speaker — *The Senato speaker*

‘A material rigid yet polished like marble tends to reflect the quasi entirety of the acoustic radiation, like a mirror does with light. At the same time marble is also considered soundproofing: thanks to its high specific weight, marble deflects sound waves,’ explains Politecnico’s Valentina Rognoli. ‘When marble is moulded correctly, this property makes marble apt to interesting applications in the world of sound research.’

The speaker will be installed at the hotel but also available to purchase from Pietre di Monitillo, allowing guests to take a musical souvenir home with them.

White &amp; gold hanging speaker — The speaker was developed by the hotel’s creative director Pier Giorgio Lomascolo in collaboration with designer Efrem Bonacina, Puglia-based stone company Pietre di Monitillo and Milan’s Politecnico

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Senato Hotel website

Rosa Bertoli was born in Udine, Italy, and now lives in London. Since 2014, she has been the Design Editor of Wallpaper*, where she oversees design content for the print and online editions, as well as special editorial projects. Through her role at Wallpaper*, she has written extensively about all areas of design. Rosa has been speaker and moderator for various design talks and conferences including London Craft Week, Maison & Objet, The Italian Cultural Institute (London), Clippings, Zaha Hadid Design, Kartell and Frieze Art Fair. Rosa has been on judging panels for the Chart Architecture Award, the Dutch Design Awards and the DesignGuild Marks. She has written for numerous English and Italian language publications, and worked as a content and communication consultant for fashion and design brands.