the story of the double-faced watch ‘chaos’ with colored window

Double-faced watch chaos tells two different times

In 1999, Japanese architect Masayuki Kurokawa introduced Chaos, a double-faced watch with a circular colored window that tells if the time’s day or night. Designed for the brand Citizen Watch, the name of the timepiece design stems from not following rules because a typical watch usually comes with just one face or frame. In this case, there are two, with one smaller than the other but joined next to its sibling, nonetheless.

The Japanese architect wanted a watch for people who travel. The idea was to have the bigger face showing the time in the wearer’s home country, while the smaller one told the time in the place they were at. So, when a person leaves home and goes to another country and they wonder what time it is in their homeland, they can just look at the double-faced watch Chaos without wondering or looking elsewhere.

all images courtesy of Masayuki Kurokawa, via note | photos by Akira Shimizu

Colored window indicates if the time is day or night

The double-faced watch Chaos comes with a normal 12-hour clock, but it doesn’t show if it’s morning or night. If the time says eight, it could be eight in the morning or in the evening. So, Japanese architect Masayuki Kurokawa puts in a small colored window, as he writes in his blog post on note. The window shows yellow for daytime and gray for nighttime. It rotates as the day goes on, similar to the progress of time. For the designer, it’s a way for the wearer to think of their loved ones, of the people far away from this.

He adds that he sees the double-faced watch Chaos as a timepiece designs that ‘thinks of people.’ This idea for the accessory came when the internet was not common yet. At that time, it was not easy to check the time in another country. There were no smartphones. There were no quick messages. So the watch created a connection. Today, time checks and phone calls are easy, but at the time, the designer felt that when tools become easy, the feeling that made the present special becomes weak.

in 1999, Japanese architect Masayuki Kurokawa introduced Chaos, a double-faced watch

Traveler’s timepiece design with a shared body

Designing the double-faced watch Chaos came with a hurdle. For the Japanese architect, it wasn’t easy to create a timepiece design with such a theme, especially putting two faces in a shared body. He tried many ways to find the right form, and later on, he bought women’s pantyhose and put them over two tubes, one large and one small. The natural curve between them became the shape of the watch body, giving the accessory a simple and clean curve.

In the blog post on note, Masayuki Kurokawa also retells a story about a conflict related to the double-faced watch Chaos. When a fellow designer and his friend Kita Toshiyuki heard about the project, he believed his idea was copied since he was also making a watch with two faces at the same time. He even had a design critic write an article about his project, so he called Masayuki Kurokawa to tell him that Chaos was not an original idea of his. The two designers were friends, but rivalry can change reactions. The designer of Chaos felt worried and didn’t contact his friend again.

the window shows yellow for daytime and gray for nighttime

The architect says in the post that he also thought about the design critic who wrote that article and how the situation must have been hard for that person, too. But finally, when the two watches were compared, they were not the same. They only shared the idea of two faces, but the design plans, the look, the concept, and the materials were all different. The double-faced watch Chaos had its own system and its own purpose, in the end.

At one point, the watch may have been in the Denver Museum collection, but the designer made many new products during that time, so he wasn’t sure, he writes. Still, it lived around the late 1990s, allowing travelers to tell time both of the place they left behind temporarily and the city they were in at the moment.

the bigger face shows the time in the wearer’s home country, while the smaller one in the place they are at