Brand Watches

Urwerk is a watch manufacturer based in Geneva, which was founded in 1997 by two brothers, Felix and Thomas Baumgartner, and their friend, Martin Frei. They set out to create this brand in 1995, when they each agreed that they should take full advantage of their passion and talent for measuring and portraying time.

Martin Frei spent the next two years designing the Urwerk watches for their first collection, while the Baumgartner brothers did all the technical aspects. Based in Geneva, they took advantage of all the knowledge of the Swiss artisans and added their own perspective of how watches should look like.

Urwerk Watch

The main goal for the first collection (and all since) was to remove all the extra distracting indicators from the watch in order to create a clear perception of time. That might be the case, but as you can see, the designs are still from another planet

After a decent number of watches were ready, a new issue became apparent: the name of the new timepieces! Studying the matter, they found that it was only natural to name their new creation after the city of UR, where the ancient Sumerians invented the first sun dials and decided that the passage of time should be fragmented in 12 units over 6000 years ago, a system that is still in place today.

Urwerk Watch Collections

Over the thirteen years of life for Urwerk, the three partners released four collections of watches: the 103, 103T, 200 and UR-CC1.

Of the four, the last one, UR-CC1 is the most unusual, with the watches featuring two horizontal indicators that remind you of an old analogical car radio. One of these indicates the hour and the other the minutes. The inspiration for this collection was the avant-garde watchmaker Louis Cottier (1894-1966), and as you can imagine, old American cars (the radios ). The watch has been in development for almost ten years, proving the immense challenge that the inside mechanism was.

The case of the 103 collection has a futuristic form, which houses a complicated construction in which the hour is indicated by the orbiting satellites as they pass by the minutes indicator.

The back of the watch was inspired by old marine chronometers which featured all the less often used indicators on their back. The whole case of the watch is made of Titanium, while the hour satellites inside are crafted out of aluminum.

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