It’s fair to say that Ghanaian British architect Sir David Adjaye looks at things differently to most people.
“My work is interested in context, about the narrative of space; their geographies, their histories,” he tells Esquire. That work includes the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and a US$500 million Smithsonian Institution museum.
But for his latest commission, he downscaled, by designing a speaker. “Rather than responding to a physical context, the challenge was to rethink what the core promise of a speaker is, to recalibrate it for how people live today, embracing changes in technology, domestic life and social habits,” he says. This meant using a concrete composite to create the MA770 for Master & Dynamic.
Since launching in 2014, M&D has disrupted the audio market with radical designs and left field collaborations. “We see ourselves as more than a tech company, but a brand that fits in with the fashion community, the artist community and more,” its CEO Jonathan Levine says. “I reached out to David and the two of us bonded over our love of architecture and materials. I couldn’t be happier with the result.”
