Wave Time is a sculptural installation for the new Sahlgrenska Life building that brings together matter, movement, and time through a sinusoidal wave form clad in repurposed copper from the Per Dubb building. Positioned before a surface of reflective two-way glass, the work creates a shifting interplay between light, material, and viewer. The wave’s rhythmic crests echo both the medical pulse wave and the physics of temporal relativity, while the copper—drawn from the site’s architectural history—anchors the piece in Sahlgrenska’s evolving identity. Its patina will continue to develop over decades, making the passage of time visible on the building’s façade.

The artwork connects scientific and philosophical understandings of time with the lived experience of those who move through the hospital environment. The mirrored glass engages passersby by reflecting their bodies and surroundings while also revealing glimpses of activity inside the building, creating a layered relationship between individual, site, and cosmos. This contemplative counterpoint enriches the wave’s scientific references, allowing viewers to encounter both motion and stillness, presence and reflection.

Fabricated from two parallel 300-mm copper bands arranged in an A-profile and supported by a stainless-steel internal structure, the work is engineered for durability, safety, and low maintenance. The wave is divided into segments aligned with the façade’s window bays, reading as a single continuous form from a distance. Spanning the 230 foot width of the facade, its final dimensions, positioning, and architectural integration will be refined in close collaboration with the project architect. With its interplay of shadow, reflection, and slowly transforming material, Wave Time offers a moment of orientation and contemplation—a brief encounter with the rhythm through which time itself becomes perceptible.

Wave Time brings forward the relationship between time and eternity through the interaction of the copper wave, the mirrored glass, and the viewer’s own reflection. The work offers both an overarching unity and a rhythmic series of forms, allowing the dualities of material and immaterial, individual and universal, to be experienced simultaneously.

Those moving along the building activate the work through their actions and glances. For the passerby, the wave’s motion provides a brief glimpse of time’s flow; for those who pause, it offers a moment of contemplation and a deeper sense of our position within time.

Wave Time is monumental yet unobtrusive—a work that reveals itself fully in the instant the viewer allows themselves to be caught by its movement and reflection.