The shortlist was recently unveiled for the London Design Museum’s 2009 design awards and - in the product category to be precise – we spotted one of our unsung heroes from this year, the Magno Radio.
Far from just a pretty thing to look at, the Magno wooden radio is something of an environmental fairytale. Its creator, Singgih Susilo Kartono, hails from Central Java and came up with the design to kick start a community-based eco regeneration in his home village.
Based on traditional woodworking craft, he set about training his fellow villagers to create modular wooden casing for a series of radios, made from a mixture of sonekeling (dark wood) and pine (light wood). Every piece is handcarved from the two types of wood and for each tree that is felled another is planted in its place. The three-band radio can also be hooked up to your mp3 player, but the charm of the design itself is what really sings.
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Year in review: top 10 design stories of 2024Wallpaper* magazine's 10 most-read design stories of 2024 whisk us from fun Ikea pieces to the man who designed the Paris Olympics, and 50 years of the Rubik's Cube
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Sharon Smith's Polaroids capture 1980s New York nightlifeIDEA Books has launched a new monograph of Smith’s photographs, titled Camera Girl and edited by former editor-in-chief of LIFE magazine, Bill Shapiro
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A multifaceted Beverly Hills house puts the beauty of potentiality in the frameA Beverly Hills house in Trousdale, designed by Robin Donaldson, brings big ideas to the residential scale
