You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller.
EUROPEAN SUPPORT TO FUND PURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.
Extract from press Release.
“Almost exactly twenty years ago, at a time when everyone was claiming vinyl was dead, Wilson Benesch a company that did not even officially exist, stood out against the tide of opinion and began work on what would be called the Wilson Benesch turntable. After a successful application for Innovation Grant Support, work began on the turntable that would become “Reference System” in many magazines. Today we are delighted to be able to announce the start of the Mondrian Project a £146,000 pure research project to explore potential ideas for a radical analogue replay system. This funding will provide the opportunity to explore avenues that would be impossible otherwise. It underlines our commitment both to analogue replay and real innovation.
Ever since the Wilson Benesch Turntable became impossible to make more than a decade ago, the company has resisted pressure to release another turntable system after the Circle. Does the world really need another re-hashed design with a huge price tag?
Although we have been conceptualising potential ideas for over a decade, to attempt to literally reinvent something is quite ambitious. The design ideas in the Mondrian Project are extremely exciting despite being risky, time consuming, costly and demanding upon staff. Fortunately as a result of recent important developments outside Wilson Benesch, our confidence in the potential success of this work has been bolstered. Further announcements on this matter will be released during the course of next week.
The Mondrian Project will require a lot of three dimensional design. Many of the design concepts will need to be proven and will then require quite sophisticated manufacturing techniques. There will be a high dependence upon our current extensive knowledge of carbon fibre composites and other exotic materials. We also know of new technolgies that will be part of the final design. The first patent application has already been filed and we expect there to be more written before the end of the eighteen month project which began in June this year.
With some pride we can claim to have built a design heritage that is about bringing something new to the market that goes beyond what was previously possible. With this additional support, we are in the best possible position to push back the limitations of today’s technologies. It is very exciting to think, that in 2009, our 20th anniversary year, we might see some of the first results from the Mondrian Project that will then feed in to product development.”
Craig Milnes Design Director.
