Kvadrat Febrik and Front Design to create a nature inspired fabric for Bang & Olufsen

Bang & Olufsen deepens its ongoing partnership with Kvadrat with this new edition of the Beosound A9 speaker. That’s the model that stands serene on its own wooden tripod, offering up an expansive disk of drivers that creates a massive soundscape. Of all B&O’s products, the A9 probably offers up the most physical real estate to cover so the Kvadrat tie-in makes a lot of sense.

The newest iteration of the speaker uses Kvadrat’s Woolscape textile, a bespoke material created especially for the B&O A9 by the company’s knitted textile brand, Kvadrat Febrik, and Front, the acclaimed Swedish design studio founded by Sofia Lagerkvist and Anna Lindgren.

The duo’s starting point for the new textile were the colours of Swedish fauna, particularly the country’s forests and lakes. According to B&O, ‘the textile explores how elements of the natural world can be reinterpreted for contemporary interiors.'

Front created a visual archive of textures and forms from nature, photographing and scanning elements that were subsequently turned into a durable double-knitted upholstery textile with a deep, tapestry-like surface. Up close, the fabric reveals the variety and texture of the knit, a quality that changes depending on the time of day and type of light.

B&O worked hand in hand with Kvadrat to translate the weave into a high-quality acoustic surface befitting one of its speakers. ‘Our starting point is always to begin with our upholstery textiles. In terms of our process to achieve a textile for audio, we work to create a textile that is lighter in weight (meaning less yarns), so the textile is more open in its construction,’ say the team at Kvadrat, ‘This will in general get us the results needed for best possible sound performance, but it’s in general a process of learning by doing. The overall challenge is to find the right level of yarns in the textile construction and simultaneously keep the texture rich, meanwhile ensuring a high audio quality.’

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At the same time, the A9 has been given a new surface finish, Sienna Brown, which extends right across the rear dish of the speaker and its aluminium legs. It pairs perfectly with the new Woolscape fabric in Mineral Red.

‘With Sienna Brown and Woolscape, we saw an opportunity to give Beosound A9 a new character through the dialogue between colour, material and form,' says Bang & Olufsen's Senior Director of Design Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre, 'This interplay of materials allows the distinctive shape of A9 to remain at the centre. It is a combination that feels both considered and natural, bringing a new sense of depth to the speaker.'

The new Woolscape covers will also be available in Black Anthracite, Gold Tone and Natural Aluminium. According to Renee Mercks, Creative Director at Kvadrat Febrik, the new fabric 'translates the textures, colours and complexity we found in nature into a textile that changes with its surroundings, creating a sense of discovery and connection to the environments that inspired it.'

Beosound A9 Sienna Brown with Woolscape Mineral Red, available from select Bang & Olufsen stores and online at Bang-Olufsen.com, @BangOlufsen, Kvadrat.dk, @Kvadrattextiles, FrontDesign.se, @FrontDesign