URWERK UR-100V UltraViolet

URWERK - The UR-100V UltraViolet plays with color

Violet! This royal hue lies at the extreme end of the visible color spectrum perceptible to the human eye. Beyond violet, the field of color becomes irrelevant. Violet is the ultimate hue. It’s the hue of superheroes, outsiders and weirdos. Hero or outlaw? Who cares? But if you’re going to make your voice heard, it’s going to be in purple!

Martin Frei tells us about this hue, so singular in his eyes: “I like the fact that a color is much more than what we can perceive. The color spectrum visible to our eyes ranges from red to violet. Beyond this violet, the color transforms into a waveform that our eyes can no longer detect, the ultraviolet. Creating a watch that celebrates this boundary, this tipping point, this passage between the perceptible and the imperceptible, fascinates me. The UR-100V UltraViolet speaks of this exploration of boundaries. Our UltraViolet, has something mystical about it, it’s a hue that sits on the border of a dimension we call color. ”

Mounted on a rubber strap, the UR-100V UltraViolet takes up the codes of the 100 family. On the UR-100V, the satellite display of hours and minutes is joined by a new piece of information. Once the 60th minute has been reached, the minute hand disappears and reappears as a kilometer counter. It illustrates the 555 kilometers covered every 20 minutes by every inhabitant of the Earth. On average, this is the Earth’s rotation speed, calculated at the Equator. At the exact opposite end of the scale is the Earth’s revolution around the sun, i.e. 35,740 kilometers per 20 minutes. On the face of the UR-100V, hours and kilometers share the same status, the same scale of values. These units light up in the night in incandescent blue for hours, and blazing green for kilometers. Felix Baumgartner, master watchmaker and co-founder of URWERK, tells us: “This creation was inspired by a gift from my father, Geri Baumgartner, a renowned restorer of antique clocks. It’s a clock made by Gustave Sandoz for the 1893 World’s Fair. Its special feature: rather than hours, it indicates the distance covered by the Earth at the Equator”.

Beneath the UR-100V’s dome beats URWERK’s new caliber 12.02 with its three-satellite time display. “The change of caliber for this version translates into a redesign of the central carrousel. The hour markers have been placed closer to the timer for an even more intuitive, fluid reading of the time,” explains Felix Baumgartner. The carrousel is forged from aluminum, then sandblasted and bead-blasted after anodizing. Each satellite screw is circular satin-finished. The satellites rest on a sand-blasted, ruthenium-treated brass carrousel. The structure housing the hour indicator is sand-blasted and microblasted aluminum. The UR-100V’s automatic winding is governed by a bidirectional rotor regulated by a profiled propeller, the Windfänger.

The aesthetics of the UR-100V case evoke a regressive pleasure. Indeed, it will remind URWERK devotees of the aesthetics of the independent brand’s first models: “We have taken certain aesthetic elements from our first designs and deconstructed our approach. For example, the steel dome of our historic models is reproduced here in transparent sapphire crystal. Its perfection is highlighted by the asperities of the titanium and steel case. As someone who constantly questions the diktat of symmetry, I’ve played with proportions to challenge the eye,” concludes Martin Frei.