TRANSPARENT BUILDS ITS FIRST STORE AROUND LISTENING

The new Transparent Stockholm store puts a listening room at the centre of the Swedish audio brand's first shop. Opening in September at Renstiernas Gata 21, near Nytorget in Södermalm, the space lets visitors compare speakers, turntables and individual components before choosing a system. The useful design decision is giving that comparison a room of its own.

Creative director and cofounder Per Brickstad designed the interior entirely in house. In the supplied photographs, pale walls and broad silver coloured display surfaces leave the equipment exposed. One display places a clear covered turntable and two dark speakers in front of three pale, vertically ribbed panels within a dark frame. The broad pedestal and contrasting backdrop let the different speaker shapes remain legible.

The view through the street window gives the objects a domestic scale. There is space between the speakers and turntables, and a record leans beside one display. Transparent's name glows above them, while the larger Musicautomat sign hints at something visitors can operate themselves.

Sound Room Makes the Components Available to Compare

The Sound Room allows visitors to try different turntable setups, including cartridges such as the Ortofon 2M Blue, and explore WiiM streaming modules. Transparent describes it as a place to hear how changing or adding components affects a system before settling on a configuration.

That is a more specific proposition than placing a speaker on a handsome plinth. A cartridge or streaming module can be difficult to understand as an isolated object. Bringing the parts into a working setup gives a visitor a way to connect a technical choice to the music coming out of the speakers.

There is a useful precedent in the OJAS listening room at Karimoku in Tokyo, where Devon Turnbull brought speakers and seating into one installation. Transparent brings that relationship between furniture, sound and time spent listening into a shop, with component comparisons built into the visit.

The press material does not specify acoustic treatments or measured performance for the Sound Room. Its purpose is clear without those claims: people can audition equipment together. How the room sounds is something to establish in person, not infer from its pale walls.

Musicautomat Gives Record Selection Its Own Station

The Musicautomat is a custom designed vinyl listening station with a permanent home in the store. Visitors can choose records and listen on their own, adding a self directed encounter alongside the Sound Room's equipment comparisons.

In the photographs, the station rises above a low display table, with its name on an illuminated sign. Its upright frame and the broad table beside it create two distinct scales: one announces where to go, while the other holds the turntable and speaker within reach.

“I’ve always loved discovering records and experimenting with different ways of experiencing sound, and we wanted the store to encourage that,” Brickstad says in the press release.

Record selection makes that intention concrete. The visitor has something to do beyond inspecting a finish or reading a specification. Choosing music also makes a listening session personal before a conversation about equipment begins.

At Madrid's Taberna Martha listening room, a DJ booth waits behind velvet curtains. Transparent's station makes listening visible from the front of the shop. Both give records a place within an interior, but the Musicautomat puts selection in the visitor's hands.

Renstiernas Gata 21 Extends Beyond Speakers

The Stockholm store will carry vinyl, TV stands, turntable accessories and audio components alongside Transparent's speakers and turntables. An Aroma Diffuser is due to join the space, according to the release.

That assortment carries Brickstad's interior beyond a single product category. Records supply something to play; stands and accessories address where the equipment goes and how it is used. The diffuser extends the domestic setting, although it is announced as forthcoming, not available at opening.

Transparent was founded in Stockholm in 2012 by Martin Willers, Brickstad and Magnus Wiberg. Its first own shop now gives that company a place to demonstrate the relationships between its products. The Sound Room and Musicautomat are the persuasive parts: one lets a visitor compare a system, the other lets them choose a record and stay with it.

Photography by Emil Fagander. Images courtesy of Transparent.