Wedge x 'time.' Speaker
A 3D-printed sand sculpture amplifies music at Shoreditch's Times Barbershop
date
05/10/2025
Category
Art, Design, Lifestyle, Music
Embargo
Available for coverage — studio interviews and barbershop visits can be arranged.

Project
Wedge x 'time.' Speaker
Client
'time.' Shoreditch
Address
7 Club Row, London E1 6JX
Material
3D printed silica sand
Installed Date
October, 2025
A speaker now sits in 'time.' Barbershop on Club Row. Printed in silica sand, it borrows its form from Wedge's Soleus chair, a curved, sculptural base that became the housing for sound. This is the piece's first appearance. Visitors to the barbershop encounter it as furniture and sculpture, an object that amplifies the room's music while anchoring its atmosphere.
The collaboration emerged from the neighborhood itself. 'time.' Barbershop functions as gathering point in Shoreditch, a place where music, conversation, and craft intersect daily. The studio saw the speaker not as technical addition but as cultural participant. By adapting the Soleus form, Wedge created something that feels native to the space: present but unhurried, functional but contemplative.
The process used binder jet printing, which fuses silica sand layer by layer. The surface carries visible evidence of its making, granular texture, printed striations, raw materiality. Within the barbershop context, this rawness resonates. The speaker doesn't perform polish or invisibility. It sits openly, its construction legible, its sand-cast form in dialogue with exposed brick, worn leather, everyday ritual.
Community response has shaped the work's meaning. Barbershop regulars treat it as landmark, something that marks the space as theirs. The speaker amplifies more than sound. It amplifies the shop's role as neighborhood anchor where design, craft, and social gathering merge without announcement. For Wedge, this is design as civic gesture: an object that serves the room while honoring the culture already present.
The piece remains at 'time.' Barbershop, where it continues to accumulate context: playlists, conversations, the daily rhythm of Shoreditch life.
About Wedge
In differential geometry, the Grassmann product, represented by a wedge, constructs higher dimensional objects by adding existing dimensions. Wedge draws from this idea both technically and conceptually, treating design as a process of separating, adjusting, and recomposing matter, meaning, and form.
Co-Founded by theoretical physicist Andy Zhang, together with artist-designers Lei Zhang and Peiyan Zou, Wedge is a design and research studio based in London. Lei and Peiyan lead the studio’s artistic, design and spatial direction, while Andy contributes expertise in theoretical physics and material science.
About 'time.'
'time.' Shoreditch is a barbershop, gallery, and cultural hub in East London. Known for its atmosphere of music, conversation, and craft, 'time.' has become a gathering place where style and community intersect. Alongside its reputation for precision barbering, the space regularly collaborates with artists and designers to create projects that blur the boundaries between grooming, culture, and design.
Read more about 'time.' at timeshoreditch.co.uk