OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Is Shrine to Sound

Together with his affinity for brutalist industrial design paired with a set of extremely tuned ears and eyes geared in the direction of classic hi-fi elements, Devon Turnbull and his firm, OJAS have turn out to be common collaborators amongst a who’s who of creatives spanning from the late Virgil Abloh to Byredo’s founder and inventive director Ben Gorham. His newest mission is as modular as it’s musical, a semi-permanent set up inside the USM Modular Furnishings’s Soho, New York flagship retailer imagined as a temple of sound for audiophiles and the curious alike.

Photograph: Lauren Coleman

Set with USM Modular Furnishings towering shelving system stocked with data, books, and audio elements, the modular furnishings’s utilitarian aesthetic makes for a superb pairing fronted by OJAS’ equally audio-aesthete’s performance. Created to ask listeners the chance to “expertise a relaxing atmosphere to ponder music, liberated from the disruption of out of doors noise,”⁠ Turnball’s and USM collaborated to determine a listening room sharing the sensory focusing traits of a temple or shrine.

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furnishings  – Devon Turnbull’s first semi-permanent listening room – integrates Kvadrat Acoustics Mushy Cells acoustic panels on partitions and ceilings with a bespoke audio system created by OJAS. Photograph: Lauren Coleman

The OJAS audio system with USM Haller case items are complemented with seating, and different furnishings designs. Photograph:Lauren Coleman.

OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furnishings shares similarities to Turnbull’s current HiFi Listening Room Dream No. 1  (under) put in inside London’s Lisson Gallery. However whereas that listening room devoted to “a democratic, public listening house, the place folks may expertise music by a high-quality stereo system with no need to personal it” exhibited an virtually desaturated minimalist ambiance dominated by the monolithic stature of OJAS’ signature grey audio system, Turnbull’s newest Listening Room turns of the dial a bit in its retreat-like comforts with a number of splashes of colour throughout its sparse seating.

Photograph: Lisson Gallery London Restricted

The OJAS Listening Room at USM Modular Furnishings set up is open to the general public and by appointments at USM Modular Furnishings Soho, 28-30 Greene St, New York, NY 10013.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, climbing, tide swimming pools, and highway journeys, a choice of his adventures and musings may be discovered at gregoryhan.com.