In 2015 we were asked to light a house in Milano for one season only — a domestic interior opened to the public, three rooms that had to carry three different hours of the day at once. The building gave us thick walls, deep window reveals and plaster that had settled into a soft uneven grey. Nothing in it wanted to be flooded. We agreed early that the light would behave the way time does: arrive, hold, then thin out again.

The entrance hall took the Wink floor lamps, set in a loose row against the far wall. Thin copper sticks carry small glass lenses, and each lens throws one clean pool onto the floor — a bright disc, then bare stone beside it. Visitors walk between the pools and their shadows travel with them, so the room reads differently at every step. Past the hall we placed the woven wire spheres, Wanderer S among them, standing on rough iron. Aluminium wire holds the bulb loosely and light leaks out through the gaps, drawing a cage of thin lines across the ceiling. Here the room slowed down. Warm, low, close to amber.

Three hours in one house

The last room was the darkest and the simplest. A single source sat hidden behind a low ledge and washed upward, so the plaster caught the light and returned only its texture, brightening slowly towards the cornice. No fixture in view, no glare. We left the windows uncovered so the street outside could fade while the room stayed lit, and by the end of the evening the boundary between the two had gone.

An installation about past, present and future should never explain itself. It should let you feel the hour change under your feet. Three kinds of light did the work here: a point, a sphere, a wash. Then we switched them on and stood back.