Steven Holl designs The Sculpture Watch as a tribute to Álvaro Siza

The Sculpture Watch by Steven Holl for Cauny

American architect Steven Holl has designed a colourful watch for Swiss watch brand Cauny that was informed by conversations with Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza.

Named The Sculpture Watch, the timepiece has a dial that includes four intersecting blocks of colour within a circular case that resembles a watch designed by Siza for Cauny.

Photographs

According to Holl, his watch was designed to be a dialogue between the two architects and was directly informed by a compliment the Portuguese architect once gave him.

“On July 25, 2018, I gave a summer lecture in at the Porto Academy,” Holl told Dezeen. “Siza came to my talk and came up to me after and said ‘Steven, you use colour like Matisse, I must try in my next project’.”

“Siza is the greatest living architect,” he continued. “I will never forget that afternoon. This watch is an homage to Alvaro Siza,”

The Sculpture Watch has a three-dimensional dial with the red, green, yellow and blue colour blocks raised on top of each other.

It was intended as a direct translation of Holl’s watercolour paintings that were complimented by Siza. Holl is well known for his painting and begins the majority of his architecture projects with a small watercolour sketch.

“Watercolor painting, integral to my design process for architecture, inspires this timepiece,” said Holl.

“The colour volumes on the dial are made of brass; well-tested in watchmaking and best to allow Cauny to reproduce the watercolours.”

“My approach to colour is conceptual,” he continued.

“I try to engage colour in the idea driving the design, like the ‘projected colour’ from unseen surfaces in the DE Shaw trading floor, or the complimentary colours in the ‘seven bottles of light’ in our Chapel of St. Ignatius, which is analogous to the Jesuit spiritual exercises.”

The watch has a colourful and geometric dial

Holl also reflected on how colour can reflect the passing of time.

“Time is marked in a personal way, with each moment its own polychrome experience,” he said.

“Colour turns time’s passage into both a visual and temporal experience. The fragility and variation of colour remind us that time is a human experience of duration.”

The Sculpture Watch is the fifth piece created for Cauny in its The Architects of Time Series. Following Siza, who designed the first timepiece in the collection, architects Rafael Moneo, Eduardo Souto Moura and Tadao Ando have designed watches for the brand.

Numerous high-profile architects have turned their hands to watch design and we recently rounded up six watches designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architects.