Urwerk
The watch: UR-202
The latest from Urwerk and a worthy descendant of the UR-201 causes another tsunami in the watchmaking pond. Like its elder sibling, the 202 dispenses with conventional hands to tell the time, in favour of a rotating star. Machined to micron tolerances, the 202’s nerve centre revolves the three cubes for the hours, each of which has a telescopic finger that points to the minutes on a sector at the bottom of the dial. This novel way of telling the time is made possible by cam-feelers beneath the three arms of the star. One end of a lever is in contact with the rotating cam, the other end moves the finger in or out according to the cam’s profile. The mechanism, machined to micron tolerances, has undergone a special MOVIC treatment so that it can operate oil free. The new selfwinding movement of the 202 took three years to develop and is a good replacement for the hand-wound movement of the 201. Cased in white gold, pink gold or in blackened platinum for a limited edition, the mechanical ingenuity of its time, day/night and moonphase indications yields nothing to the inventiveness of the styling, as unconventional as its way of telling the time.
Its architectural counterpart:
The Asahi Brasserie at Asakusa, called “the flame” by Philippe Starck. “What fascinates me most about this watch are the three elements that turn on their axes. They provide a new way of telling the time that reminds me of the designs of Philippe Starck. Just as in the watch, he manages to deconstruct functions so that he can design them better. In the Asahi Brasserie, built in 1989 in Asakusa, Starck asks the right questions. In the same way, the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, reconstructed the functions of a museum for the Guggenheim in New York, which is no longer a simple box with a lighting system, but rather a tour around a central light well. It obliges the visitor to follow a route. In the same vein there’s another eloquent example in Geneva’s old Paris/Manhattan cinema. The builder, Marc-Joseph Saugey, also transformed the functions of the place in his way by taking the moviegoers straight into the pit as soon as they enter the auditorium.”
Richard Mille
RM 020 pocket-watch
This year Richard Mille goes back to the golden age of watchmaking, in a modern and innovative version of the pocket-watch. The hand-wound RM 020 is the first pocketwatch have a baseplate made of carbon nanofibres forged at a pressure of 7,500N/cm2 at a temperature of 2,000°C. Originally used for the aircraft of the Unites States army airforce, this material gives the movement stability in all conditions. The tourbillon escapement, devised in the early 18th century for pocket-watches, is powered by twin barrels, coupled together. They give a running time of around 10 days, shown by the up/down indicator at between 9 and 10 o’clock. The RM 020’s ultra-modern styling is also innovative. The caseband is in titanium, but the bezel and caseback can also be in pink or white gold. The futuristic dial displays a function indicator at 4 o’clock in addition the hours and minutes and the power-reserve indicator. A watch-chain in titanium with a quick release catch completes the look. Remove the chain and place the RM 020 in its special stand to create a desk clock.
Counterparts in architecture:
The Bouches-du-Rhône parliament building in Marseilles, by William Alsop, and the Georges Pompidou centre in Paris, by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano “Between the watch and the building, I first notice a kind of obsession with technicalities, a frantic search for the ideal machine. While the building compels the human body, the watch is controlled by time. In this case the two adopt a relatively aggressive stance. The 1994 building by the English architect, William Alsop, is definitely influenced by the Archigram movement, which notably launched the design of the Pompidou centre in Paris by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. It displays an overabundance of curves and features that are disconcerting to the eye. The multiplication of pipes gives the impression of a project that’s gone slightly crazy.”
de Bethune
The watch: Dream Watch One
The Dream Watch One displays De Bethune’s penchant for being innovative and different. The most obvious difference is its unusual styling. The case, in palladium-coated white gold, with mobile lugs that cradle the wrist, reveals a palladium dial punctuated by hour markers in domes of steel and the minutes scale engraved into the metal. Brushed, burnished and polished surfaces catch tones of light in a hieroglyphic display that tells the time in a new way. This architectural fusion of space, time and light beats to a 28,800v/h manually wound movement that drives the brand’s exclusive spherical revolving moon at 6 o’clock, and displays its power reserve at the back of the watch. The Dream Watch One’s innovative aspect centres on the design of its regulating organ. In their quest for the ideal ratio between inertia and mass de Bethune’s engineers have patented a fifth-generation balance. This technical novelty reveals the heartbeat of the movement as a vibration rather than as a swinging balance. The mirror surface surrounded by domed and polished palladium bridges gives a strong impression of intrinsic and infinite motion — hardly perceptible but nevertheless real.
Its architectural counterpart:
the Onyx cultural centre at Saint-Herblain, by Jean Nouvel “Just like this watch, the building raised between 1987 and 1988 at Saint-Herblain on the outskirts of Nantes appears like a UFO. The huge, dense, black cube in the middle of a shopping mall’s parking lot created a stylistic shock. It looks nothing like the surrounding buildings. Jean Nouvel’s work raises challenges and question. How do you get in? How does the light get in? The de Bethune watch gives me the same impression — that of creating a visual shock in the watchmaking environment.”
