Cauny x Steven Holl

Steven Holl’s Sculpture Watch transforms the dial into a small, three-dimensional composition. Interlocking forms create a sculptural surface in which blue, red, yellow and green meet in shifting relationships. The Fibonacci sequence (3, 5, 8, 13) marks the hours, linking the watch’s visual structure to proportion. Rather than treating the dial as a flat display, Holl gives it depth and a distinct presence on the wrist.

Watercolour is integral to Holl’s architectural design process and informs the watch’s approach to colour. In a painting, some colours seem to advance while others recede; here, the interlocking shapes create a similar sense of movement. Light and colour give the passing hours a visual dimension, while the changing experience of each moment invites reflection on time as duration—not merely a measure to read.

Conceived as a tribute to Álvaro Siza, the watch grows from a dialogue about colour. The 36 mm Holl Black pairs a black case and black Horween leather strap with the multicolour dial; the 36 mm Holl Silver combines a silver-tone case with a steel mesh bracelet and the same blue, red, yellow and green composition. Each version brings Holl’s sculptural treatment of colour to a different material expression.

Meet the Collection

Author's note

Steven Holl on his design for Cauny:

WRITTEN IN WATER

This watch is an homage to Alvaro Siza, who told me “Steven, your colors are like Matisse... I must work next in color.” Watercolor painting, integral to my design process for architecture, motivates this design. While in painting, some colors push forward and others recede, here, the interlocking shapes of the colors have a push and pull geometry. Time is imagined as color, with each moment its own polychrome experience. Color turns time’s passage into both a visual and temporal experience. The fragility and variation of color remind us that time is a human experience of duration.

The Fibonacci sequence (3, 5, 8, 13) marks the hours on the dial, suggesting time as analogous to proportion. The spatial energy of architecture is activated in color, light and time

- S. Holl

Brief biography

Steven Holl was born in 1947 in Bremerton, Washington, and is one of the most influential American architects of recent decades. Internationally recognised for his poetic use of light, space and materiality, he developed a distinctive architectural language shaped by his interests in art, literature and philosophy.

After studying architecture at the University of Washington, Holl founded Steven Holl Architects in New York in 1977. His work includes the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the Chapel of St Ignatius in Seattle, Linked Hybrid in Beijing, and Simmons Hall at MIT. Known for beginning projects with small watercolor sketches, he received the Alvar Aalto Medal in 1998, the RIBA Jencks Award in 2010, the AIA Gold Medal in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2014.

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