After last year’s successful Power Design project, the Japanese manufacture’s stunning exhibition is back in Italy to amaze and entertain all watch enthusiasts from April the 12th to the 30th, 2024.
What is the Power Design Project?
This is an experimental project that invites the Manufacture’s designers to thoroughly explore the essence of watches, expressing themselves solely through their creativity, to go beyond the classical functions and concepts of timepieces, without the Manufacture imposing any constraints on them. It is a stylistic and conceptual exercise from seven different perspectives, the personal perspectives of the designers, to create watches that can express a new sensibility and appeal through designs developed around a specific theme that changes each year.
This year’s theme “Incredibly Specialized Watches”
This year the Power Design Project was declined under the theme “Incredibly Specialized Watches.” As you all know, Seiko is world-renowned for producing some of the world’s most reliable instrument watches including divers, racing chronographs, and railroad pocket watches.
This time, however, the Maison decided to take the concept of “specialization” to the extreme, asking its designers to devise “incredibly specialized” watches, that is, timepieces dedicated to a very specific function, leaving the creativity of each of the designers carte blanche.
Seiko Power Design Project Watches
The result of this stupendous initiative are seven novel, fascinating, and fun watches that draw inspiration from everyday life, Japanese tradition, popular games, and even neuroscience. The best part is that the Maison decided not to keep all its creativity within the confines of its own manufacture.
In fact, the seven watches will be on display until April 30, 2024 at the Seiko Boutique in Milan’s Via della Spiga 52, an unmissable opportunity to admire and touch unique concepts of “incredibly specialized” watches.
“Hide & Seek”
Who hasn’t played hide-and-seek at least once as a child? The Hide & Seek is a watch that reinterprets the wonderful children’s game according to its designer Masanori Kawamura. The result is truly incredible.
The watch is designed for the “ogre” of the game. With this on his wrist, the chosen one can track the countdown to the start of the game, and thanks to the wheel on the end of the cover, he is also able to keep track of how many players he has scouted. Needless to say, this watch instantly makes you a child again.
Patternmaker’s
The Patternmaker’s is the perfect watch for any designer and anyone who is passionate about tailoring. This concept watch has a flower-shaped case made entirely of cotton to turn it into, for all intents and purposes, a pinhead.
Looking at the watch raises the question, where is the crown? Well, at 5 and 6 o’clock we find two crowns, obviously in the shape of a pin. With the first crown you will be able to set the time. The second, on the other hand, has a very “specialized” function! Every milliner has deadlines to meet in his work, and thanks to this crown, the specialist will be able to adjust the rehaut that will mark the countdown to the set delivery date.
Small spoiler of the exhibit, the pink flower is not the only variation of Patternmaker’s which was made.
Sukiyaki
Sukiyaki is a traditional Japanese dish whose main ingredients are beef, tofu, ito konnyaku (noodles), mushrooms and onion. The designer of this “specialized” watch, Akira Yoshida, wanted to pay homage to the Japanese dish by creating a tool that keeps track of the cooking time of each of the ingredients needed to make the perfect Sukiyaki and informs when the dish is ready to be served… amazing!
Nothing is left to chance; in fact, as you can see, even the case is specially designed to resemble as closely as possible the typical pan in which sukiyaki is traditionally eaten.
Pandagraph
Designed by Kiyotaka Sakai, this watch for some is the absolute star of the exhibition. Playing on “panda” chronographs, nicknamed so because of the black-and-white color scheme for dials and counters, Seiko’s designer wanted to create a watch that was truly a panda through and through. Even the tachymeter was nicknamed “sasameter” from the Japanese “sasa” meaning bamboo.
Masking Tape Enthusiast
Who has never had the need for duct tape and not been able to find it? Well with this watch it will never happen again. The Masking Tape Enthusiast allows you to carry a roll of colored masking tape with you at all times! A fascinating and fun idea from the mind of Yugo Hibayashi, which in addition to carrying a roll of masking tape, gives free rein to customizing the dial, indexes and “rehaut.”
For Sunny Men
This watch “for sunny men,” is actually for anyone who wants to feel a bit like Inspector Gadget. Joking aside, the Sunny Men designed by Yu Ishihara is a return to the origins of watchmaking.
In fact, to conceive the idea, the designer was inspired by the oldest way of marking the passage of time, analyzing the Sun’s movements by relating them to objects on Earth through shadows. This is precisely how the first sundials were born as many as 6,000 years ago.
This is an ancient and primordial way of marking the passage of time, inextricably linking man to the universe and nature. The result is nothing less than a stunning three-dimensional wrist sun-dial equipped with all the necessary tools to allow the correct time to be read in any position, as long as the Sun is there of course!
Ambidextrous Watch
The Ambidexterous watch is, at first glance, the most ordinary of the series. But don’t let appearances fool you, designer Kento Ito has conceived an incredible watch that fuses watchmaking, design, and neuroscience.
All this takes the form of an “incredibly specialized” timepiece for ambidextrous people that can be worn on both wrists thanks to an incredible combination of original technical solutions and optical illusions that allow the watch to be rotated 180° without in any way compromising the ability to read the time, while keeping the crown on the side of the hand.
Final Thoughts
Honestly, each of these watches deserves an even more extensive in-depth study, but we strongly believe that the best way to understand their workings, extravagance and above all brilliance is to see them in person, to try them on the wrist.
Luckily, all the watches (including some surprises that we won’t spoil) will be on display at the Seiko Boutique in Milan, Via della Spiga 52, until April 30. Let us know which is your favorite after seeing them live!
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