The Woodrow Stereo Mckay nilson

Published 18 / 02 / 2018

McKay Nilson realized the Woodrow Stereo project during his thesis in Multi-Disciplinary Design at the University of Utah, US.

Passionate about music, he finds there an incredible capacity for inspiration and motivation. Believing that music can improve the way we behave in society, his Woodrow Stereo project revolves around this indispensable, yet invisible element. In the all-digital age, our interaction with audio devices would have become more gloomy and distant. McKay then sought to create an enclosure that brought human engagement and real experience.

McKay wanted a tactile and functional design at the same time. During his reflections, the basic concept was quickly worked out: the entire speaker system would appear like a giant volume knob. After hours of engineering, prototypes and testing, this concept became reality and gave birth to an aesthetically and technically successful stereo speaker.

Thanks to its 66cm diameter, The Woodrow Stereo can easily be swiveled from left to right to adjust the volume of the speakers, hidden behind the disc. Even if the stereo speaker is connected through a system using Bluetooth technology, the sound can only be controlled through physical user intervention. In collaboration with the design studio Swarm, McKay chooses birch plywood from the Baltic countries to design this object. Thanks to the superimposed construction of its layers, the plywood blends into the design of the enclosure to evoke acoustic waves. To do this, each wooden board was cut by a CNC router - Computer Numerical Control - then glued. A water-based finish was then applied to give it a shiny appearance while preserving the color of the wood.

WE love

This new relationship to the volume knob, the use of birch plywood which allows to enhance a rather soft wood which brings a more aesthetic