Matías Muñoz has dedicated his life to supporting Ottawa’s music scene. From a DIY venue to a rehearsal studio; FONO is what those projects were all building up to: a hi-fi lounge located in 473 Bronson - a historic building whose roots we discovered coincidentally — running speaker wire, stepping around what we took for construction debris until a closer look revealed shattered tombstones.

Matías found us through our earlier installs, and we were involved before construction began — collaborating with design firm Wei Sanchez to integrate the speakers into the millwork while the room was still on paper. The lounge posed a genuine puzzle: a horseshoe-shaped room, which no single pair of speakers can serve honestly. We treated it as two zones merging into one — coverage designed so that the sound meets itself gracefully in the bend.

The brief was the kind we'd design our whole company around if we could: quiet, intentional daytime listening that shifts into a relaxed nightclub evening where conversation and music thrive together. And the DJ booth followed the same philosophy — no isolated monitor bubble blaring at one person. The DJ hears what the room hears, plays for the people in it, and stays part of the night.