Radios of the Future

Filed under: Home Audio > Radio Tuners



Gizmodo had a nice little compilation of futuristic radios up this morning. Some pretty interesting designs from the kids at London's Royal College of Art.


Above: Radio by Mikael Silvanto
“My design utilizes technology already widely available in digital caliper tools for a very analogue, informative and honest form and function. Physically the concept is a Radio in a scale instead of a scale in a radio. I find it fascinating and beneficial to move the radio itself, not a button or a slide.”



Above: Post it Radio by Yuri Suzuki
“When I lived in North London, I found some nice local radio stations. Some radio stations were licensed and some of them were totally illegal. My radio enables you to make notes about the radio station and mark its position. The radio looks like a memo pad, but underneath is a speaker; the pencil acts as the antenna that controls tuning and volume.”



Above: Future Pirate Radio (Graffiti radio) by Yuri Suzuki
“I found a connection between graffiti and pirate radio. Both of these art expressions hack into public facilities. In the case of graffiti, the hacker uses the wall. In case of pirate radio, the hacker uses public radio waves illegally. It can be said that pirate radio is sound graffiti and I would like to propose to combine these two methods of graffiti; The artist can spray a QR code (two-dimensional bar-code) in the street with a stencil. Then when people who find the graffiti take a snapshot of the code with a mobile phone they can find the radio station through the internet."



Above: Radios by Jochem Faudet
“In the two radios the related functions are grouped, as a result a more logical and understandable radio in its use:
Radio 1: All the tuning and volume functions are grouped around the speaker. The On/Off switch and volume function is situated closest to the speaker. The AM/FM switch is situated at the end of the tuning circle, by flicking the switch down it points to the FM numbers situated on the outside of the circle or by flicking the switch up it points to AM numbers on the inside of the tuning semi circle.
Radio 2: The tuning function and volume function are separated from each other in this concept. To adjust the volume one has to turn the wheel with the integrated speaker, by sliding the AM/FM switch to FM it hides the frequencies of the AM and vice versa.”