Mapu Speakers

How did preserving local crafts lead to the design of a speaker?

Philine: More than ten years ago, there was a design competition for handmade products. In Chile, some villages produce a lot of pots and ceramics, that is how the idea of turning a pot into a speaker started. Pablo submitted a concept, that was made with a local potter from the BioBio region.

Pablo: I wanted to make a high-end product, in a country that doesn’t have a lot of industry. Most of what Chile sells is food and raw materials, and most of the work is done by hand. So, I asked myself: ‘How can we keep this pottery craft alive, using local materials, while also looking at the future and complementing it with something more complex?’

What I submitted was not ready, it was only a photo of an idea. Philine and I both didn’t have any acoustic knowledge at that time. But I wanted to show: ‘Look what a speaker could also look like.’

Philine: We didn’t win that competition, but the image was published on the front page of Design Boom – a leading design platform – and many other media outlets. For months we got messages from people who wanted to buy the speaker, but it didn’t exist yet. It was crazy.

When did you decide to turn your idea into an actual product?

Philine: Initially, we kept working on other projects. Then, three or four years after developing the concept, the speakers were featured in another well-known magazine as one of the ten most beautiful speakers in the world. Again, we got a lot of emails from people asking where to find them.

We now knew there was serious interest in the market, and we had just met Ricardo, a potter friend from Portugal. We decided to make our first real prototypes with him and got a grant from the Chilean government to show them at Salone del Mobile, one of the world’s largest design tradeshows in Milan.

Pablo: It was a very nice booth with Ricardo working on the potter's wheel and music playing all the time. There was so much interest from people. We even won a special mention, and we got a lot of press coverage again. That was the start of everything, and we decided to proceed and look for acoustic support.

How did you manage to fuse traditional pottery techniques with modern sound technology?

Pablo: We first found a professor at the Technical University in Berlin, who helped us with an acoustic test. He found out that the hard resonance body and the round forward shape we had developed by chance, had a lot of potential. Acoustically it was really incredible. We got in contact with a company to develop amplifiers and decided to move to produce our first small collection with local potters from Nacimiento.

Philine: Honestly, bringing together traditional techniques and modern technology was a huge challenge in the beginning. There were two worlds that didn't match at all. The pottery was handcrafted and always a bit different, but for the amplifiers to work we needed the vases to be perfect and airtight. Without that precision, the speakers wouldn’t work.

Instead of 6 months, we ended up staying for more than a year to learn everything we needed to learn about pottery. It was really a process of trial and error in every aspect. It started raining and everything got wet, or pots busted open in the oven. We became experts by making every possible mistake that you can make.

Pablo: When we finally managed the pottery part, it was time for the engineering part. For starters, we needed funds to develop and produce the first series of amplifiers. We decided to create a crowdfunding campaign and pre-sell our speakers. What followed was really a series of lucky breaks that helped us gain acoustic expertise.

Can you tell us about the local materials you use? Do they go hand in hand with high-end engineering?

Philine: People sometimes expect handmade and local to mean compromise. But for us, it’s about exceeding expectations when it comes to performance. Our materials turn out to be very suitable for sound engineering.

Pablo: Instead of using polluting materials like plastic or aluminum, our speakers are made of clay. Clay is beautiful, and the round shape has acoustic advantages. It reduces resonance and creates a warm, full-bodied tone. For insulation, we use biodegradable wool, cork, and leather. Leather and cork both have ideal properties for our insulation purposes, because they are elastic and strong. Wool also helps to protect the internal components, because it is non-flammable, and unlike synthetic fibers it does not need harmful chemicals.

Philine: Our materials are always locally sourced, as regional as possible. For instance, we use cork in our Portuguese speakers, because Portugal is full of cork oaks. And in the Chilean ones we used leather, which is widely available there. In the future, we envision making more series with local materials, like a Japanese version with porcelain and volcanic ash, or a Moroccan one using local clay, stones and wood.

Pablo: In case a speaker would break, you could just disassemble it into its parts.

For instance, the ceramic vases of the Portuguese Preto speakers aren’t glazed. They become black through a special firing technique in an oxygen-reduced atmosphere. So, it's really only soil that becomes earth again. Also, our packaging is very sustainable. It is made of a cardboard tube filled with wool for transportation. Once you unwrap it, you can put the wool in your garden or make a cushion out of it.

For anyone curious, where can people listen to the sound of your speakers?

Pablo: This is important for us, and also still a challenge. Before people decide to buy our speakers, they often want to hear them for themselves. That’s why we are gradually building up a network of listening points in stores, studios, and galleries where people can hear Mapu Speakers in a real environment. It’s not like testing a speaker in an electronics shop, but rather an experience.

Philine: In Bremen, we regularly invite visitors into our studio for listening sessions. We also collaborate with concept stores and design-minded venues that share our values. In Amsterdam, for instance, people can find our speakers at What Design Can Do or the Mexican restaurant Coba Taqueria.

We are very open to partners who want to be part of this network. As it grows, we hope to create decentralized listening stations across Europe and beyond, where people can not only test the sound, but also learn about the materials, techniques, and stories behind each piece.

What do you need for more brand awareness to conquer the electronics market?

Pablo: What is so beautiful is that a lot of interesting people know us and keep cheering for us. For example, we met Manu Chao a few months ago. He is such a musical inspiration, and he is using our speakers now. These things keep happening and we want to keep inviting them in. It motivates us tremendously when people identify with our way of thinking, and it really helps when they want to share our work with the rest of the world.

Philine: To make a real impact, and to keep growing as a sustainable company, we are now at the point where we also need to start selling more speakers. So, we are looking for value-aligned distribution points, like ecological boutique hotels, where people can listen to music and order our speakers.

And we have just launched a new crowdfunding campaign that people can support until June 11th. We aim to raise €20,000 to start the development of the next generation of multiroom amplifiers for our speakers, to expand our network, and to work on marketing and e-commerce.

Finally, what is the main message that you want people to share about you?

Philine: With Mapu we use modern technology to honor traditional knowledge. Its development has really been a vehicle through which we got to know incredible places and people. Our designs are meant to make people listen, metaphorically and literally, to the sound of the earth and the voices of local craftspeople.

We believe that the spirit that goes into the making of every product matters. In our speakers you can feel it and hear it.

Pablo: We believe design is about much more than aesthetics, trends, or designers with colorful glasses in shiny offices. It’s about reconnecting with who we are, with our roots, and our cultural identity.

We stand for the kind of design that puts people first. It’s not always the easiest path, but it gives us meaning and a reason to keep going. We invite everyone who believes there’s a different way to create — one that’s more human, more diverse, and more connected — to be part of our journey. Because this isn’t just about speakers. It’s about shaping the future together.

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