If you’ve spent any time on design Instagram, you’ve certainly come across Peter Tarka. He’s a 3D artist focusing on floating shapes, candy-colored geometry, and really, just objects that could never actually be built. He’s been hired by the likes of Apple, Nike, and even Porsche.
So when D1 Milano tapped him for a collaboration, his first concept was, by the brand’s own admission, technically impossible to manufacture. The Milanese outfit has been making design-first watches since 2013 with 20-plus collabs under its belt, but nothing this weird. They decided to build it anyway, and the result is the aptly-named Impossible Watch.
A Friendly Robot for Your Wrist
The watches face feels a lot like a cheerful little robot starting at you. Two big disc “eyes” up top, a third disc below, and a tiny LCD mouth rounding out the face. Those discs are where things get a little weird. Rather than traditional hands, each one spins a printed dot into position, with the upper pair handling hours and minutes while the lower disc sweeping through the seconds.
Then there’s the weekday readout, seven small apertures that fill in as the week rolls on. One dot means Monday. All seven means Sunday. It’s a progress bar for your weekend, essentially. And if all that decoding sounds exhausting before your morning coffee, the LCD repeats the time, day, and date in plain old digits.
The Render Goes on a Diet
Tarka’s original retro-futuristic vision called for stainless steel, and the first prototype proved exactly why renders never actually consider real life. The thing was simply too heavy to wear. D1 Milano re-engineered the case and bracelet in aluminum, shaving 50% off the weight and unlocking anodized color finishes in the process.
That decision gave us four launch colorways. White Space and Orange Pulse keep things silvery with white or orange accents, while Black Orbit goes full murdered-out with orange pops and Green Dimension commits to green from bracelet to dial. The compact 36mm case wears a sapphire crystal with blue anti-reflective coating, carries 5 ATM of water resistance, and runs on a digital movement developed specifically for this oddball display.
Spec Sheet
Model: D1 Milano x Peter Tarka Impossible Watch
Case Size: 36mm
Case Thickness: 12.55mm
Case Material: Anodized aluminum
Crystal: Sapphire with blue anti-reflective coating
Water Resistance: 5 ATM (50m)
Movement: Custom multifunction digital quartz
Band: Aluminum bracelet
Colorways: 4x (White Space, Orange Pulse, Black Orbit, Green Dimension)
Pricing & Availability
The Impossible Watch is live on Kickstarter now, where it blasted past its $15,000 goal to the tune of over $316,000 and counting. Early tiers are already gone, with remaining pledges starting at $379 and eventual retail pricing set at $495 for the Studio Editions and $545 for the Color Editions.
Recap
D1 Milano x Peter Tarka Impossible Watch
D1 Milano shrunk one of Peter Tarka’s physics-breaking 3D renders into a 36mm aluminum watch that tells time with spinning discs. The robot face comes free.
