Culture / Design

Peugeot and Pleyel team up to design a piano

Peugeot Design Lab and French piano manufacturer Pleyel needed a year and a half to produce a futuristic piano that truly breaks with the past.

Oct 02, 2012 | By AFPRelaxnews

Piano Pleyel Peugeot Design Lab

Peugeot Design Lab and French piano manufacturer Pleyel needed a year and a half to produce a futuristic piano that truly breaks with the past.

The baby grand piano designed by Peugeot Design Lab sports aerodynamic lines inspired by automobile design and architecture, according to Peugeot.

The piano’s body and soundboard are made of wood, a crucial material for the instrument’s acoustics, but the lid and the piano’s single leg use carbon fiber, a material that is widely used in automobile design.

pleyel piano

The closer you get to the instrument, the more it looks like a UFO in the world of piano design. The first surprise comes with the three legs fused into one single gravity-defying cantilevered leg, borrowing from architectural design.

The groundbreaking lid, operated with a system of levers, no longer requires a stick to prop it up and was designed to be opened with only one hand.

A feature never seen before on a piano is the lowered mechanism that was brought down to the same level as the keyboard to benefit both the pianist and his audience.

Futuristic Piano Pleyel Peugeot Design Lab

The former gets to hear a more immediate and precise sound than on traditional pianos, and the latter gets a better view of the artist’s hands on the keyboard.

The piano designed by Peugeot Design Lab for Pleyel is available to order for €165,000. It is currently on display at the Paris Motor Show. It can be ordered from Peugeot’s Design Lab stand.

Piano Pleyel Peugeot


 
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