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Lately it seems that TVs have crossed the line from gadget to furniture. Sure, they’ve always been part of the living room landscape, but as Bang & Olufsen’s new Beovision Harmony TV shows, televisions no longer need be eyesores—they’re design pieces in their own right.
Like Samsung’s Frame and LG’s rolling screen, Bang & Olufsen’s new $20,000 TV debuting at Milan Design Week 2019 reimagines how the gadget can work and look in a room. When turned off, the 77-inch OLED screen crouches behind two oak and aluminum-banded panels that are, in fact, the TV’s sound system. Turn it on, and the panels fan outward like wings and the TV glides upward into an optimized viewing position.
”With Beovision Harmony, we wanted to create a meaningful object for interior that reduces the visual presence of the TV and transforms it into something that people will develop an emotional attachment to,” John Mollanger, Bang & Olufsen’s vice president of brand and markets told Dezeen.
Eliciting an emotional connection might be aiming a little high, but the delicate choreography of the Beovision Harmony does accomplish something rather impressive—it momentarily distracts us from the fact that a TV is still just a big black box that sits blank most of the time.