Tokyo-based design firm E&Y’s 'Tube Map Radio' – a collaboration with the Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki – attempts to bridge the gap between the ever increasing complexities of modern technology and the needs of its users. The radio is devoid of any casing, so the operator has to interact directly with the exposed circuit board which, as the name indicates, is inspired by Harry Beck's original 1933 London Tube map. Fittingly, Beck – a technical draughtsman – initially had the idea for his map when working on a circuit diagram, but it was Suzuki who came up with the idea of turning the tube lines into conductive tracks and stations into circuit vias and other components necessary to building a simple FM/AM radio.
Thus, an antenna extends from the Metropolitan Line's Watford station, the tuner dial can be found on the Central Line at White City and the volume control is located at Liverpool Street station; charmingly, a speaker is installed near Marble Arch (at Speaker's Corner, natch) and a battery represents Battersea Power Station.
Suzuki originally came up with the idea for a commission by the London Design Museum (where he was designer in residence in 2012). He wanted to make consumer electronics more comprehensible; printed circuit boards used to be rather simple affairs but with today's electronic 'black-boxes' it is hard to get one's head around what goes on inside an iPad or laptop. By bringing the components into the open and using the familiar Tube map as the conductor, Suzuki and E&Y hope to dispel some of the complexities of the electronics and them more accessible. We also think it would look great on any wall.
Suzuki came up with the idea for the radio as part of a commission by the Design Museum, London
Each tube line acts as a conductive track, while each station is either a connective via or an essential radio component
An antenna extends from the Metropolitan line's Watford station, the tuner dial can be found on the Central Line at White City and the volume control is located at Liverpool Street station
-
Designer Marta de la Rica’s elegant Madrid studio is full of perfectly-pitched contradictionsThe studio, or ‘the laboratory’ as de la Rica and her team call it, plays with colour, texture and scale in eminently rewarding ways
-
‘Nothing just because it’s beautiful’: Performance artist Marina Abramović on turning her hand to furniture designMarina Abramović has no qualms about describing her segue into design as a ‘domestication’. But, argues the ‘grandmother of performance art’ as she unveils a collection of chairs, something doesn’t have to be provocative to be meaningful
-
A local’s guide to Los Angeles by defiant artist Fawn RogersOregon-born, LA-based artist Fawn Rogers gives us a personal tour of her adopted city as it hosts its sixth edition of Frieze
