The winning entries of the Roland Digital Piano Design Awards feature radical reimaginings of the keyboard instrument.

In 2015, digital piano specialists Roland launched a competition to create a brand-new digital keyboard concept on the theme “Unleash”. The results have produced a range of radical reimaginings of the traditional piano design that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of a sci-fi blockbuster.

The Roland Digital Piano Design Awards were open to designers and design students from around the world. Competitors were encouraged to conceive a futuristic instrument that broke away from tradition. While the focus was on the look and structure of the piano, competitors had the option of proposing alternative digital functions and sounds as part of their concept.

^{Winner of the Grand Prize, Jong Chan Kim’s Facet Grand Piano}

Korean designer Jong Chan Kim took out the Grand Prize with his sleek, geometric Facet Grand Piano. “In my initial design concepts, I focused on how to translate an iconic grand piano’s design to a piano of the future,” said Kim, who studies at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. “I was thinking through many different...