A long the main square in Geneva’s Old Town, Urwerk’s headquarters occupy a little three-storey townhouse. It houses the watchmaking atelier, a little museum of watchmaking history, and a generous lounge area. That’s where a row of long glass tubes – each housing a column of eight glowing digits that are continuously changing, with black bases – are standing. They look like massive lightsabers but also cryptographic encryption machines. Instead, the Spacetime Blades are futuristic grandfather clocks sans pendulum or chimes.
For the past couple of years, Urwerk’s chief designer, Martin Frei, has been obsessed with the relationship that space, time, and light (as a wave and particle) have.
In astronomy, distances across space are measured based on the speed of light in a vacuum and the amount of time it takes…
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CROWN (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 2 2024