Silver Musical Instrument · 2021
Una Corda Piano Acoustic Piano
- Silver A' Design Award 2021 in Musical Instrument
- CLIENT: Nils Frahm
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 550,204
- Verification code E3D1B8C106 · Verify this award
Colors
About Una Corda Piano Acoustic Piano
Una Corda is an acoustic piano built without a furniture case. The open design allows the sound to travel freely to the listener. The instrument has one string per note, a stainless steel frame and a double-layer soundboard. The stainless steel frame keeps the piano light, unlike the cast iron frames used in traditional pianos. The resulting tone is soft and clear. Una Corda is played like a traditional piano, and the visible mechanical parts show how each note is produced. The piano is hand-crafted and no chemicals are used.
About the Silver A' Design Award
Una Corda Piano Acoustic Piano is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Una Corda Piano Acoustic Piano is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Una Corda Piano Acoustic Piano is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The Una Corda piano represents an open design, without a furniture "box", which serves for its sound to freely travel. It has only one string per tone, a stainless steel frame, and a double-layer soundboard, these features setting it aside from any traditional acoustic piano.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 1330 mm x 670 mm x 1170 mm
- Tags
- Una Corda, Una Corda Piano, Klavins, Klavins Piano, Piano Innovation
- Production Technology
- The Una Corda design is strictly defined by the acoustic and technical properties of the piano, utilizing materials that serve best for each particular function. Stainless steel for the static frame serves for the lightness of the design, versus the heavy designs of traditional pianos, which all are equipped with cast iron frames. The Una Corda is completely hand-crafted, utilizing industry manufactured parts only for the action. The Una Corda is essentially a "green"product, no chemicals used.
- Design Challenge
- A major challenge was to define the most suitable material for the main frame of the Una Corda. All traditional pianos utilize a cast-iron frame, which was prohibitive for the Una Corda, for reasons of weight and cost. After thorough research of alternative materials like steel and aluminum, stainless steel showed most suitable, to pick up the string tension that sums up to 49 kN. Historically there has never existed an open-design acoustic piano, but in light of the rather open-minded public of the 21st century it seems appropriate to offer an innovative product design.
- Research
- Materials and design research, the objective being to design a piano that reflects the 21st century feel. Investigating existing piano designs by Internet search and based on years of experience with traditional piano design, as well as meticulous analysis of all factors pertinent to piano sound. Building a first prototype, evaluating its weaknesses and applying needed improvements. The final result constitutes a disruptive, strictly functional piano design, aiming to appeal to a public open for innovation on a field of generally rather conservative attitudes.
- Inspiration
- Frequently clients were asking for a softer sounding piano, compared to the traditional acoustic pianos. In the course of researching piano acoustics, I decided to strip the piano from any and all unnecessary features, invent a new, softer soundboard, and to build a piano by the strict principle of "form follows function" - the one-string-per-note Una Corda piano.
- Project Duration
- The project was started in February 2014 in Balingen, Germany, and basically finished by May 2015 in Germany, though it was finally completed in every detail only in December 2020 in Kuldiga, Latvia.
- Operation Flow
- The Una Corda technically is played like traditional pianos, though based on its open design the player can follow the mechanical process of each note pressed. The sound character differs from any other existing piano by means of softness and clarity of tone, because of the one-string-per-note principle, the specific soundboard design, and the specific hammer felt. The action is modified to play faster than typical upright piano actions allow for.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Davids Klavins, 2021
- Image Credits
- David Klavins
Video Credits: Native Instruments, Berlin
