SOUND OBJECTS

Bang & Olufsen is ending its centenary celebration series with two new limited editions of the Beolab 90, the company’s famously faceted flagship loudspeaker. Founded in 1925 in the Danish hamlet of Struer, Bang & Olufsen's design history has long been shaped by major figures including Jacob Jensen and David Lewis, whose work helped define its cool, exacting modernism. From early Bauhaus-inspired designs for cabinet radios to the iconic CD players and Beovision televisions — not to mention those extra-sleek remote controls — the company’s archive makes clear that aesthetics have always been central to its identity.

The same certainly holds true for the Beolab 90 speaker system. First introduced in 2015 and originally designed by André Poulheim of Studio Noto, the speaker has now been supercharged by B&O’s in-house design team (lead by Kresten Bjørn Krab-Bjerre) as an even more visually uncompromising object that treats sound equipment less as background appliance than as a full-blown presence. The two new editions, Monarch and Zenith, quite literally put the “bang” back into speaker design, through a level of material finish that feels closer to sculpture than hi-fi equipment.

Monarch is the warmer of the pair, layering the speaker’s body with angled and curved rosewood lamellas alongside six wooden knots, ochre-toned aluminum crowns, and semi-transparent fabric panels that partially reveal the drivers beneath. Zenith is the cooler drama queen of the two, with six curved panels, each carrying 289 anodized aluminum spheres in seven pearl-inspired tones, creating a skin that shifts subtly with light, movement, and sound. The pearl-blasted dark-gray facemask is meant to evoke an oyster shell, while a circular mother-of-pearl inlay on the top lid pushes things into maritime fantasy. If Monarch nods to mid-century Danish furniture craft, Zenith leans into something more atmospheric and almost otherworldly: part precision-machined object, part luminous shell.

Both editions preserve the speaker’s underlying acoustic architecture: 18 bespoke drivers and beam-forming technology remain intact beneath all the artisanal flourish. Only ten pairs of each edition will be made, each accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a miniature aluminum Beolab 90 sculpture housed in a custom box. In short, these are speakers, yes, but they are also collectors’ objects for people who prefer their audio equipment to announce itself long before anyone hits play.