When we interviewed Note Design Studio founder and design manager Cristiano Pigazzini in Minimalissimo Nº3, we got the impression that new projects that were a step away from furniture was on the horizon. As it transpires, Note have recently unveiled a striking new art installation commissioned by the municipality of Nacka, Sweden. Their first site-specific installation Waiting Windows is a large-scale architectural meditation on the act of waiting—a sculptural study of the ‘dead time’ between the anticipation and the event.

As part of a substantial expansion of the Stockholm subway, there will be the creation of a rail link between Central Stockholm and the neighbouring Nacka municipality, with three new Nacka stations added to the blue line from Kungsträdgården: Sickla, Järla and Nacka C. The improvement of the network coincides with extensive development in Nacka, fulfilling the project requirement that provision is made for 50,000 new inhabitants in the coming years—including the creation of 14,000 apartments and 10,000 workplaces.

To mark the magnitude of the project and celebrate the fact it will make Nacka Sweden’s biggest municipality, three groups of artists and designers have been commissioned to create public installations that respond to the development. Note was asked to create an outdoor public artwork close to the new Sickla station–an unusual departure for a studio more used to creation in the fields of architecture, interiors, and product design.

Interior architect at Note, Daniel Hecksher explains:

Waiting is a poetic frame of mind, but it’s often considered something of a void in our daily lives. We have to do it, but if you allow yourself to actively occupy that moment rather than be passive, then it becomes something else altogether—something that’s not to be seen as wasted time. On a subway platform, you’re witness to small slices of everyday life as trains slip by—each passing window acting as a pinhole camera snapshot of the lives happening inside.