Mexarts is a high-end Chinese furniture manufacturer, with a strong focus on contemporary design. And the company’s award-winning A Singing Desk concept takes the somewhat perfunctory looking digital piano and transforms it into beautiful and functional modern furniture.
A standard Yamaha digital piano is the start point. This is customised with different casing shells, leg assemblies, shelves, and accessories as desired. The idea is to create an instrument that integrates seamlessly into a domestic environment.
A Singing Desk has more than one role in the house. For example, it may double as a home office desk, a storage unit, a decorative panel, or as a small table with lamp.
One iteration of A Singing Desk features an elegant contemporary styled case with a top panel that functions both as a piano lid and a tabletop. The lid also works as a music stand when open, and storage when closed.
This may not be a new idea, Henri Pape was famous for such instruments in the 1840s, but A Singing Desk, featuring a digital piano and contemporary styling, brings things up to date.
The “Mono Desk” version is the most simple form of this piano-furniture. It has that elegant mid-century modern design that has recently gained so much traction.
Award Winning Design
World renown designer Hans Thyge Raunkjær is responsible for A Singing Desk. He worked with Mexart’s Zheng Xiaojuan and members of the Yamaha Design Lab on the project.
A Singing Desk recently went on display with other unique instruments as part of Yamaha’s vision for the future of domestic pianos. And it also drew a lot of attention at this autumn’s China International Funiture Fair in Shanghai.
Mexarts considers A Singing Desk to be so more than just a piano. And others seem to agree as the project has just won a prestigious Red Dot Product Design Award (2019).
It has yet to be decided if/when A Singing Desk will be available as a consumer product. But more information can be found on the Mexarts Household Group Co. Ltd’s website.
