Transparent’s New Wireless Speaker is a Love Letter to Brutalism

Stockholm-based audio brand Transparent has a bit of a habit of making wireless speakers stand out from the rest on the market. But its latest bold take on speaker design is a departure from the more familiar and, well, openly roots, and the business of new design and materials for the product.

The Brutalist Speaker takes its reference from the architectural style established in the UK in the 1950s, known for its simple, geometric lines and striving for raw materials over excessive decoration.

Instead of the tempered glass used in its other products, Transparent’s Brutalist Speaker is made from 70 percent recycled consumer aluminum. With its side-mounted 6.5-inch woofer, paired with two 3-inch tweeters, wonderfully placed at 90-degree angles, it laughs at conventional speaker design.

“While we’re well known for our collection of transparent products, that’s not the reason for our name,” Per Brickstad, creative director at Transparent, tells WIRED. “It’s about our whole approach to being honest in design, and how we want to be seen by our clients. So we’ve been exploring different things and different ways we can reflect that design philosophy in new projects.

“We did a previous project with a limited edition called Acoustic Sculpture, which is a sculptured speaker inspired by the human ear. We were determined to make another speaker in this category, but one that is more related to our minimalist design approach.

“We’ve been looking at Brutalism a little bit because it’s an amazing architectural style—you don’t know if these buildings are from another planet or from Earth. But it also lends itself well to acoustic performance elements. “