Wheel of Time

Brief information

In Budapest there stands an hourglass the size of a small structure: the Timewheel was made as one of the largest mechanisms of its kind in the world. It was installed in 2004, when Hungary joined the European Union, so the form of the annual cycle here is connected not only with time, but also with the country's political turn.

The installation site adds a second layer of meaning. The wheel stands at the entrance to Városliget, to the right of Heroes' Square, where a Lenin monument once stood. The old monument was dismantled and moved to Memento Park, and in its place appeared a mechanism that was supposed to begin the countdown anew every year. Since autumn 2010, the structure has stopped working because of faults and wear, so now not only the idea of the clock matters, but also the trace of failed maintenance.

What to notice right away

It makes sense to compare three things: the shape of the wheel, the materials, and the principle of the pouring itself. Red granite, steel, and impact-resistant glass make the object look less like an ordinary monument than a heavy machine in the open air. The scale also reinforces this idea: the diameter is 8 meters, the width is 2 meters, and the weight is 60 tons.

Inside are six tons not of sand in the usual sense, but of glass granules. They were meant to pass through a small opening from the upper glass chamber into the lower one over the course of a year, while a computer system maintained the flow rate. After New Year, the entire wheel had to be turned 180 degrees: four people could do this with steel cables in about 45 minutes. Therefore, the main detail here is not the size, but the dependence of the enormous form on a tiny opening, electronics, and manual rotation.