Geneva – October 15, 2025
The UR-10 is more than a milestone in URWERK’s trajectory. It’s the coalescence of time and space, legacy and freedom, science and emotion. It allows URWERK to reinvent itself while staying true to its core beliefs.
At first glance, a paradox unfolds: a round dial, hands in the center, concentric counters… features that seem alien to URWERKS DNA, yet in truth reveal a new facet of the company’s ethos.

An URWERK unlike any other before.
This is an URWERK with a dial, a round case and an almost sacrilegious pair of hands in the center. On paper, the UR-10 appears to be a radical departure for the company. However, upon closer inspection, it is unequivocally a member of the ‘Special Projects’ family, the outlier, out-of-the-box, groundbreaking collection URWERK is so adept at creating.

While the UR-10 features three sub-dials, it is not a regulator. Nor is it a chronograph or any form of calendar watch. Its subsidiary indications do not measure the passing of time. The UR-10 is dubbed a SpaceMeter for good reason: it measures the distances our planet travels across the time-space continuum. A world first!

And its three sub-dials are as many astronomic instruments:
• At 2 o’clock, the counter marked EARTH measures every ten kilometers the Earth travels in its daily rotation, in increments of 500 meters.

• At 4 o’clock, the counter marked SUN advances in 20 km steps, registering every 1’000 km the Earth travels on its solar orbit.

• At 9 o’clock, the counter marked ORBIT combines both trajectories, thus inscribing every 1,000 kilometers of rotation and 64,000 kilometers of solar orbit on two synchronized scales.

• On the back of the case, a peripheral hand traces the hours on a 24-hour scale, mirroring a full rotation of the Earth. The caseback is engraved with indications of both Rotation and Revolution: Rotation reads clockwise, while Revolution is read anticlockwise. This striking opposition reflects the Earth’s own anticlockwise revolution, a poetic reminder of the cosmic dance.

Martin Frei, Art Director and Co-Founder of URWERK, remarks, « Time and Space are the same reality. The UR-10 depicts 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. »

A family affair
The Baumgarter family history was instrumental to the creation of the UR-10. Felix’s grandfather was a watchmaker, while his father, Gérard, restored ancient clocks, a role he performed with great distinction. Felix, too, followed in the footsteps of his forefathers by embracing watchmaking. Yet where they honored tradition, he preferred to pursue a resolutely contemporary, at times futuristic vision of horology.

In 1996, Gérard Baumgartner uncovered a singular pendulum clock signed by Gustave Sandoz, an unsung master of 19th century chronometry who happened to be France’s Horologist-Mechanic by appointment to the King and the Navy from 1874. Intrigued by the prestigious signature, Gérard acquired the timekeeper despite its inner workings proving unfathomable to him. Before him stood a clock with three sub-dials, that seemed unrelated to any conventional time display, and a pendulum that beat far too quickly. Patiently, Gérard unraveled the enigma, eventually discovering a planetary trajectory tracker – a mechanical marvel designed to measure Earth’s rotation. Conceived on the principle of a regulator, it revealed the distance travelled by our planet across three distinct time scales.

Once restored, Gérard entrusted this clock to his son, Felix. “My father, a custodian of horological tradition, gave me a classic clock, with regular hands… that do not tell time. To me, a watchmaker creating atypical, handless watches alongside Martin Frei” recalls Felix Baumgartner, master watchmaker and co-founder of URWERK. “This gift became a true bridge between two worlds: my father’s devotion to classical horology, and URWERK’s quest for disruption. It was the spark that ignited our UR-10 — the very first chronometer to express Earth’s movements in kilometers.’”

Core creations
« We’ve put a lot of love in this timepiece. And a lot of energy as well, adds Felix Baumgartner. We’ve partnered with Vaucher Manufacture to develop this base movement, to comply with its demanding technical and design constraints. » On the other hand, the URWERK complication module – conceived entirely in-house – opened up new challenges in weight and energy management, a field that has always been at the core of URWERK’s philosophy. « As always, we’ve pushed research and development to the far reaches of our expertise, analyzing the most minute detail to retain nothing but the essential, says Felix Baumgartner. Five wheels, five axes, a lot of rubies to lessen friction and an exacting focus on power, all in order to express two different rhythms in a single movement. We used skeletonized LIGA wheels, some of which weight 0.015 gram and down to 0.009 grams, the same as an eyelash, in order to save as much energy as possible. This preserves the concept’s inherent poetry along with its resistance and accuracy. »

Another horological development relating to the UR-10 is the addition of a Double Flow Turbine, an evolution of URWERK’s one-way self-winding system. This patented turbine comprises two stacked propellers which rotate in opposite directions. When a self-winding mechanism isn’t spinning in the winding direction, the rotor’s high speed exerts high constraints on the system. The double turbine creates air flow between the two sets of blades, which slows them down and preserves the mechanism. These blades also create a hypnotizing spectacle.

Made on the third rock from the sun
The steel and titanium case is just 7.13 mm in height, making it one of the thinnest ever made by URWERK. And it’s as wildly complex as one would expect. The titanium upper case and the steel caseback are fitted into one another and sealed shut with a longitudinal screw. “The case is clean and symmetrical, but it has a very specific construction, says Martin Frei. It’s screwed from the sides, like Gérald Genta used to do it. That structure is typical of some iconic watches. It only has two parts and no caseband: it’s simple but in fact extremely complex.”

On this occasion, URWERK has crafted the hands and dial of the UR-10 within the confines of its workshop and finished them to a flawless conclusion.

Primordial momentum
To conclude, the UR-10 is an invitation to reconsider what URWERK represents. Beyond satellite hours, the brand’s actual nature rests on three pillars.
The first one is a fundamental human connection. The legacy and transmission within the Baumgartner family is one side of that coin. The other is the organic and unbreakable bond between its two founders.
The second one is a perpetually changing contemporary design language. From evolution to update, from reinterpretation to quantum leap, shapes and details are always in a state of flux.
The third one is the symbiotic meshing of that design with a horological invention force that’s also constantly evolving. Whether it’s the display, materials, finishing, torque calculations or a quest for lightness, URWERK is first and foremost a watchmaking trailblazer.

Martin Frei has the final word : “The UR-10 is a philosophical reflection on our place in the universe; a spirit evident in each URWERK creation.”