The Dutch artist and designer Maarten Baas has created a monumental, participatory clock at Schiphol Airport called People’s Clock. This work replaces the previous video clock in Lounge 2, where a lone figure painted and deleted clock hands while maintaining real time. The new installation, located in Lounge 1 for European/Schengen flights, is a giant cube measuring 2.5 meters per side, displaying time across four faces through video.
To create People’s Clock, Maarten Baas enlisted 1,000 people, including airport workers and volunteers, for a 12-hour aerial film shoot. Participants moved in unison to form the hour and minute hands, while a single person ran around the perimeter to represent the second hand. The shoot took place in a single day inside one of Schiphol Airport’s hangars. The project is part of Baas’s Real Time series, which began in 2009 with Sweepers Clock at Milan Design Week. This series includes works like the Grandfather Clock and the Paddington Clock in London. People’s Clock extends the theme by celebrating the collective effort of people who keep an airport running, emphasizing that time is fundamentally human.
The installation is more than a clock; it’s a cultural event. Volunteers ate, practiced yoga, played, and participated in screen-printing workshops, turning the experience into a full cultural happening. Baas’s playful and irreverent approach transforms the clock into a tribute to the labor and creativity of airport workers, highlighting how time, for all its precision, ultimately depends on people moving.