Transformative nature

Milan Salone 2015 – LS:N Global caught up with designer Dawn B Haleta to talk about Time Over Time, a design project made using dichroic glass, a material that changes colour in different lighting.  

• Time Over Time is a series of sculptures made from dichroic glass
• Designer Dawn B Haleta envisages the pieces as contemporary sun dials, used to measure the passage of time

Time Over Time considers how inherently changing properties of a material act as a signal of the passage of time. Each light in the collection is cast in dichroic glass and slowly changes in colour from morning to midday to night-time using a programmed timeline of alternating light waves. In an ancient process, dichroic glass is made by layering glass with nano-layers of metallic oxides that give the material its transformative properties. When the lightwaves hit the metallic oxides it triggers a change in the colour of the material – a fluorescent light will have a different effect from a tungsten or UV light source. ‘I became inspired by the fact that something can change like that without being programmed,’ says Haleta. ‘There is no digital technology within the material. It just has these properties that change in a similar way to a digital screen.’ 

The Big Picture: For more on the applications of dichroic glass, read our Lucid Spectrum design direction.