Earthtime 1.26 Zaragoza, Spain, 2026
Description
Janet Echelman’s Earthtime sculpture series heightens our awareness of our interconnetedness with one another and our physical planet.
Earthtime 1.26 Zaragoza was installed as part of Festival Luce, February 19-22, 2026. The sculpture celebrates the interconnection of sky and earth, flexibility and strength, humans and our physical world, bridging opposites with bold colors and soft curves.
The sculpture serves as a symbol of interconnectedness, composed of countless intertwined fibers. Each time a single knot moves in the wind, the location of every other knot in the sculpture’s surface is changed in an ever unfolding dance of human-made creation with the forces of nature beyond our control.
To create the sculptural form, Echelman works with teams both inside and outside her studio. These include architects, designers, and model-makers in the studio, as well as an external team of aeronautical and structural engineers, computer scientists, lighting designers, landscape architects, and a fabrication team.
Inside Echelman’s studio, the physical form of Earthtime 1.26 was digitally modeled with inspiration from a scientific data set describing a single geological occurrence -- an earthquake and tsunami in Chile in 2010 -- which caused ripple effects around the globe and even sped up the earth's daily rotation. The number in the title refers to a measurement of time, as the earth’s day was shortened by 1.26 microseconds.
Sculpture fabrication begins with braiding custom engineered fibers which are fifteen times stronger than steel by weight. These custom-colored twines are knotted both by loom and by hand, and every rope is spliced using centuries-old craft techniques. Connecting the past with the present, the artwork takes ancient methods to a new urban scale.
The Earthtime series is a global traveling project. To date, the Earthtime 1.26 sculpture has been installed in 17 cities on 5 continents: Denver, Colorado (2010), Sydney, Australia (2011), Amsterdam, Netherlands (2013), Singapore (2014), Montreal, Canada (2015, 2016, 2017), Prague, Czech Republic (2015), Durham, UK (2015), Santiago, Chile (2016), Shanghai, China (2017), Chiayi, Taiwan (2018), Hong Kong, China (2018), Geneva, Switzerland (2020), Munich, Germany (2021), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2021), Milan, Italy (2022), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2023), Enschede, Netherlands (2025), and Zaragoza, Spain (2026). Each installation has unique colored lighting designed to speak with its specific architectural and historic context.
Materials and size
Hand-spliced UHMWPE (Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene), knotted and braided high-tenacity nylon and polyester, programmed LED lighting, DMX controller, steel trusses, and sky.
Installation dimensions: 157 ft. length x 109 ft. width x 130 ft. height
Dimensions of net: 89 ft. length x 82 ft. width x 18 ft. depth
Credits
Artist: Janet Echelman
Studio Echelman Team: Danielle Efrat, Daniel Alexander Smith
Sculpture Design Engineer: SOM San Francisco: Alessandro Beghini, Nicole Wang
Client: Zaragoza Luce Festival, Antídoto
Photography + videography: Evoque Photography
Location
Plaza de San Juan de los Panetes, Zaragoza, Spain