Urwerk are one of those brands you can instantly recognise because of their Avant Garde designs, unusual displays and futuristic aesthetics. It’s therefore one of the biggest plot twists you can imagine for them to produce a circle dial, integrated bracelet sports watch with central hands. Yet that’s precisely what we have with the new Urwerk UR-10 SpaceMeter.
Now, this is Urwerk we’re talking about, so it’s not as if their interpretation of an integrated bracelet sports watch is a riff on something as normal as a Tissot PRX. It’s still completely bonkers. For starters the case maintains their signature sci-fi appearance with broad, flat surfaces, sharp angles and bevelled edges. It’s also as big as a spaceship, measuring 45.4mm x 44mm, though it is relatively thin thanks to a thickness of 7.13mm excluding crystal.
It’s also made of lightweight titanium, which helps to offset some of the weight of such large dimensions. Another clue that this is still an Urwerk is that the crown is positioned at 12 o’clock instead of 3, which you normally see on sports and tool watches where they want to avoid the crown digging into the back of your hand during activities. Or on Urwerks which have the same problem due to their dimensions.
Moving to the dial though, it looks unlike any other Urwerk. It’s a relatively understated circle display with central hour and minute hands that point to a peripheral hours and minutes scale. It’s slightly domed but beyond that it looks like a fairly normal watch face with three subdials. Take a look at the scales on those subdials though and you will again be reminded that this is an Urwerk because they don’t track anything so mundane as time.
The first subdial at 2 o’clock, labelled Earth, tracks the distance travelled by the Earth during its daily rotation. The second subdial at 4 o’clock, Sun, then tracks the distance travelled by the Earth around the Sun in its orbit. The third subdial at 9 o’clock then takes both of those trajectories and combines them on a synchronised scale. Meaning that for every 64 complete rotations of the Sun dial and 100 rotations of the Earth dial, the Orbit dial completes one rotation. Hence the name UR-10 SpaceMeter.
It’s designed to remind you that each and every minute of the day, you are hurtling through space on a rock – the sort of ego death you can imagine is similar to Douglas Adam’s Total Perspective Vortex in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are two versions of the watch being produced, the first with a black dial and the second in silver. Both feature circular brushing that reminds me of long exposure pictures of the night sky, where stars wheel overhead.
But wait, there’s more! Turn the watch over and not only do you reveal an exhibition caseback but also a 24-hour scale so that you know what part of the Earth’s daily rotation you are actually in. At the same time, your focus is drawn to the ‘dual flow’ turbine rotor, a world first automatic rotor that consists of two parts that rotate in opposite directions, creating a distinctive visual when it moves.
The movement powering all this is the UR-10.01, an automatic calibre with double barrel system that provides a 43-hour power reserve. That might sound like quite a low reserve for a double barrel calibre but you have to remember that the subdials complete rotations in 22 seconds, 34 seconds and 36 minutes respectively, making it one of the most frenetic and power hungry displays you’ll find.
This watch is a space nerd’s dream and I’m not going to lie, I absolutely love it. It combines weird and not very practical functions that are purely conceptual and intellectual with a case that draws on iconic wristwatch archetypes but in a way that feels subversive and against type for Urwerk. It’s a watch having a bizarre identity crisis where it’s simultaneously the least and the most Urwerk-coded watch in their collection. And it can be yours for CHF 70,000 excl. tax (approx. £65,680).
Price and Specs:
More details at Urwerk.
