Independent Swiss watchmaker Urwerk unveiled its latest horological invention, the UR-10 SpaceMeter, a timepiece that attempts to coalesce the concepts of time and space. Co-founder and master watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and artist and chief designer Martin Frei introduced the watch, which breaks from traditional complications by measuring the actual distance the Earth travels, rather than simply the passing of time. Dubbed a “SpaceMeter,” the device is being hailed as a world first for expressing Earth’s movements in kilometers.
The UR-10 and its unconventional function come from the company’s “Special Projects” family of groundbreaking creations. It is not a regulator, chronograph or calendar watch. Instead, it features three astronomic instruments on its round dial, a seemingly radical departure from Urwerk’s atypical design language. A counter at 2 o’clock, marked “Earth,” tracks every 10 kilometers of the planet’s daily rotation in 500-meter increments. Another counter at 4 o’clock, labeled “Sun,” registers every 1,000 kilometers of Earth’s solar orbit, advancing in 20 km steps. The third sub-dial at 9 o’clock, marked “Orbit,” synchronizes both trajectories, inscribing every 1,000 kilometers of rotation and 64,000 kilometers of solar orbit.
The reverse of the steel and titanium case features a peripheral hand that traces the hours on a 24-hour scale, mirroring a full rotation of the Earth. The caseback engravings denote “Rotation” clockwise and “Revolution” anticlockwise, a “poetic reminder of the cosmic dance” that reflects the Earth’s own revolution. Martin Frei stated that the watch is a “philosophical reflection on our place in the universe,” depicting the “two characteristics of our earthly condition: to be bound by human time, and to be mere passengers on a planet constantly traveling through the cosmos.”
The movement is a blend of internal and external expertise. Urwerk partnered with Vaucher Manufacture for the base movement, while the in-house complication module focused on energy management. The watch utilizes skeletonized LIGA wheels, some weighing as little as 0.009 grams, or “the same as an eyelash,” to save power. The mechanism integrates a patented Dual Flow Turbine, an evolution of the company’s self-winding system, featuring two stacked propellers that rotate in opposite directions to slow the rotor and preserve the mechanism. The concept was directly inspired by a 19th-century planetary trajectory tracker by Gustave Sandoz, which Felix Baumgartner’s father, Gérard, restored. Felix Baumgartner called the restored clock a “true bridge between two worlds,” and “the spark that ignited our UR-10.”
The UR-10 SpaceMeter measures just 7.13 mm in height. It will be produced as a limited edition of 50 pieces, with 25 in titanium version and 25 in black. Urwerk’s latest timepiece is priced at $88,000.
