Hidden beneath the speaker cover of BeoPlay A9 you will find an ancient geometric form. This is the story about how the Fibonacci sequence ended up on a Bang & Olufsen speaker.
The Fibonacci Pattern
Hidden beneath the speaker cover of BeoPlay A9 you will find an ancient geometric form. This is the story about how the Fibonacci sequence ended up on a Bang & Olufsen speaker.
Leonardo Bonacci – or as he was better known, Fibonacci – was an Italian mathematician that lived around Pisa from 1170 to 1250.
Leonardo Fibonacci was the man behind the introduction of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to Europeans – nowadays the most common symbolic representation of numbers in the world.
And what does Fibonacci have to do with Bang & Olufsen? Once you peel off the front cover of a BeoPlay A9 music system you’ll find the answer.
Among some of the other things Fibonacci introduced to the Western world was a sequence of numbers discovered by 6th century Indian mathematicians. In that sequence each number is the sum of the previous two numbers – and it would later be named the Fibonacci Sequence. Using the numbers geometrically will create a logarithmic spiral. In case we haven't lost you already, we can actually show you that spiral – because it’s prominently placed right on the hood of our A9 speaker.
“The spiral is a formula of life,”
Øivind Alexander Slaatto, the designer behind the A9 describes the thinking behind the use of the intricate pattern: “Everything that grows, grows in spirals.”
“Designing the A9 we knew there had to be holes for screws on the front to hold the components together,” says Øivind and continues, “and because of the changeable cover I wanted to create a product that could bear a look under the skirts, so to say.”
“The pattern creates a unified expression – so all you have to relate to is one thing. We have removed the complexity.” Øivind points to the details of the screw positions and how integral they are to the pattern. Not the other way around. You could call it form and function unified. “I also wanted to instil a bit of nature and move away from the more stringent design of the past.”
“The design is a combination of mathematics and pattern breaks,” Øivind says with conviction, “if you only follow the rules of mathematics, you don’t risk anything and you don’t show humanity.”
“When the patterns and the rules are broken, that’s when an artist shows personality!”
Check out the pattern for yourself at your local Bang & Olufsen retailer.