The artwork was created by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel and consists of several sections, including a round circular void from which puffs of steam were at one point released throughout the day, and a clock made of large orange LED digits.

The clock showed the wrong figures for over a year in 2010–2011 until, in June 2011, the dial-up connection it had previously used to obtain an atomic time reading was updated.

[4] On September 19, 2020, Metronome became a climate clock as it started showing the time remaining until the Earth's carbon budget is used up as a result of concerns related to global warming above the 1.5°C threshold that was outlined in the Paris Agreement.

A long thin bronze cone is poised at a diagonal on the rippling brick façade: a time indicator that suggests perspective.

A large bronze hand poised high on the wall is an accurate enlargement taken from the historical statue of George Washington in Union Square Park directly below.

Left of the vertical brick center, on the glass façade of the building is a horizontal clock with pairs of digits that accurately display the hours, minutes and seconds that have passed since midnight, as well as the time remaining in a 24-hour period.

Metronome contemplates time: geological, solar, lunar, daily, hourly, and momentarily, revealing the fractions of seconds in the life of a city – and of a human being.

Metronome poses as a vent for this energy – an oracular center for the public to gauge their momentary presence, their mortality, from which the city can be examined as a vital infrastructure.

Viewers are confronted and reassured, confused, enlightened and asked to question the moment of their existence in relation to their natural and built environment.

"[9] The New York Post put One Union Square at #2 on its "10 Buildings We Love to Hate" list, calling it "a grotesque modern nightmare.