London Design Festival 2016 – The Green Room at V&A museum by Glithero

Green Room is a monumental installation at the V&A museum, conceived by London design studio Glithero in partnership with luxury watch maker Panerai, supporter of London Design Festival 2016. Glithero is known for its excellence in installations for special occasions, like the one they did for Tory Burch’s Milan boutique display at Milan furniture fair 2016.

Taking the watchmaker’s central premise of ‘time’ as the inspiration, the designers have created a kinetic piece that changes our perceptions of what a clock can be. “We wanted to create a time piece that people could be inside of,” says British designer Tim Simpson, founder of Studio Glithero alongside Dutch designer Sarah van Gameren. “This clock is an interactive experience rather than something you glance at.”

Renowned for their mesmerising, time-based mechanical installations, Glithero have created a cylindrical curtain made up of 160 multicoloured silicone cords that wrap around a six storey stairwell on the west side of the museum, a dramatic space that benefits from a tall classical domed ceiling and plentiful daylight thanks to its large windows.

Taking full advantage of the stairwell’s 17.5 metre drop, the silicone cords are looped over a 3.2 metre-diameter ring that’s clearly visible for all to see within the stairwell’s dome. Each cord is connected to a central rotating cam arm that turns at a rate of one revolution per minute. One by one the strings are lifted, slowly rising 2.5 metres from their starting point before returning back down again, creating the effect of parabolic motion. The result is an immersive wave of colour that is first encountered at ground level, just a little over head height.

Like much of Glithero’s work, the Green Room installation explores the theme of time making the collaboration with Panerai all the more pertinent. “It feels very in tune with the building,” says Simpson of the all-encompassing work. “Museums are all about our perceptions of time. The artefacts speak of other time periods and transport you there or make those periods of time tangible. So thinking about the work as a time piece within the building seemed like a very logical idea.”