They Have Watches But We Have Time

What if time were the true material of design?

Conceived by Iskander Guetta and Quang Vinh Nguyen, Swiss designers from the Master of Environmental Design program at the Yale School of Architecture, the exhibition They Have Watches but We Have Time takes over the waiting room of the Swiss Consulate, as part of its Art @ the Consulate exhibition series, with an installation revolving around notions of design, time, and power. The installation considers time as a material of design through one of its main instruments: the clock, interrogating what happens when we understand clocks not simply as measuring tools, but as something that organizes relations and shapes identity by forcing multiple temporalities into one, singular timeline.

On view by appointment throughout its run, the exhibition serves as the departure point for a public program taking place from October 8 to 13. The week-long series features a public conversation with WAI Architecture Think Tank on design, time, and power at Van Alen Institute; a guided urban walk exploring New York's architecture through its hidden and faded temporal layers; and a roundtable on archives, asking the question: who truly designs time?

Exhibition: October 2026 – January 2027 · Public program: October 8–13, 2026