Citizen: Light is Time / 50

For the watchmaker Citizen, Tsuyoshi Tane of French office DGT has created a spectacular light and time installation that envelopes visitors in a soft gilded cloud.

“Sunlight is the terrestrial measurement of passing time”, explains Tsuyoshi Tane, of French office DGT, “we took that as a starting point and developed the simple concept behind the Citizen installation.” Citizen is present at Milan Design Week for the first time and its display features the concepts of time and light linked by a principle of necessity, in which light adopts the shape of time.

80,000 ‘plates’, the structural base of watches, are hooked to 4200 metal threads hanging from the ceiling.

The light is refracted on the metal discs and becomes the raw material for a stage set displaying, in three phases, the mechanical components that have been used in Citizen watches since the 1920s.