Time you can read across a square
A clock face with hands is an instrument for the person standing under it. A tram terminus needs the opposite: time legible at 200 metres through sleet, by someone deciding whether to run. The clock shows the hour as a single two-metre numeral bent in neon, and the minutes as a bar of light climbing the frame's edge — at quarter past, the frame is a quarter lit.
The numerals swap on the hour with a three-second crossfade that has become, unexpectedly, a small public event. On New Year's Eve the crowd counts it down.
Neon, on purpose
LED could imitate the look at half the power, and the first study specified it. Full-scale mockups ended the debate: neon's continuous stroke reads as a drawn line where the LED segments read as a display. The tubes are bent by one of Belgium's last neon workshops, the transformers are serviceable from a hatch, and the whole sign draws less than the terminus's coffee machine. Craft won on legibility, and it photographs like a promise kept.