That hero is the UR-120 Blue Planet.
The third and final iteration of a now legendary model, it claims blue as its signature: deep, almost liquid, suspended somewhere between Earth seen from orbit and the endless azure of infinity. Lifted by touches of gold, this final UR-120 appears to drift between two realities: one governed by the cold precision of mathematical mechanics, the other by tales of exploration, distant galaxies and heroes raising one last farewell before vanishing from sight.

The case: a technical object in the service of style
The UR-120 Blue Planet is built on an interlocking two-part case construction, a structural principle dear to URWERK co-founder and artistic director Martin Frei: ” I’ve always been drawn to this two-part case approach – a base and an upper shell that fit together with precision. A hallmark of Gerald Genta’s work. Technically, it’s remarkably clever. You find that idea of a carapace, of built-in protection. The seam vanishes, the assembly becomes invisible. At that point, construction is no longer just a technical constraint, it becomes an act of design.”

Here, blue does not soften the UR-120. It sends it elsewhere. The watch becomes the hull of a space module, a fragment of interstellar architecture, an object designed for another atmosphere. Its smooth upper surface, free of visible screws, seems to stretch forward. The domed sapphire crystal draws the eye into the display. The articulated lugs – a rare feature in URWERK design – extend the case with seamless continuity, while a spring concealed within the 6 o’clock lug fine-tunes the fit on the wrist.
Nothing is accidental. Nothing is just cosmetic. Every detail serves the structure, the ergonomics and the visual trajectory of the watch.

The calibre: kinetics of a salute
At the heart of the UR-120 Blue Planet beats Calibre UR-20.01, a mechanism designed not only to indicate time, but to stage it. Three hour satellites orbit a central carousel. Each advances in turn along the minute track before leaving the stage to prepare for the next hour. Then comes the gesture. As a satellite reaches the left-hand side of the case, it opens. Its two rectangular arms split apart to form a V. The Vulcan salute comes to life.
Familiar to generations of science-fiction devotees, this gesture is transformed here into a genuine horological complication. The carousel rotates. The satellites counter-rotate to remain legible. The arms pivot independently on their own axis. Their opening and closing are controlled by a lyre-shaped spring, while Maltese crosses choreograph each sequence with absolute precision.

Felix Baumgartner, URWERK co-founder and master watchmaker, explains: “In actual fact, once we realised we had to open these satellites, it became a cause for personal celebration. A new horological conundrum to solve. The UR-120’s carousel alone comprises 175 components, while the complexity of the satellites requires us to control their interactions to the nearest micron. Our challenge has always been to optimise the forces in play. Energy management is delicate and intricate. Among other things, we used our signature Maltese cross element and produced the lyre-shaped spring at the heart of this complication in our own workshops.”

Gold: when function becomes light
Against the deep blue architecture of the UR-120 Blue Planet, the lyre springs and Maltese crosses are finished with a 24K yellow-gilt PVD coating. Here, gold is not an ornament. It reveals the function. It draws the eye to the active components, the points of tension, the parts where energy is stored, released and transformed into motion.
Like the Bussard collectors glowing at the front of the USS Enterprise’s warp engines, these gilded elements seem to capture and channel power. Every passing second becomes energy made visible. Every mechanical impulse becomes light.
Soaring towards the stars
The UR-120 Blue Planet does not announce a sequel. It is a final transmission.
For one last time, its satellites open. For one last time, that fleeting V-shape appears beneath the sapphire crystal. A Vulcan salute. A signal from the bridge. A nod to those who grew up with distant galaxies, impossible spacecraft and the belief that adventure might begin at any second.
The final UR-120 does not take a bow.
It soars away in a blaze of golden fireworks, then vanishes into the blue !

The post URWERK UR-120 BLUE PLANET The Final Salute from the Cosmos appeared first on Arab Watch Guide.

After the raw texture of the Carbon CTP in the “Eagle” and the mineral whiteness of the ceramic “Polaris”, the “Black Star” concludes the 230 collection triptych on a cosmic note. The curtain falls on a note of vibrant black: a gravitational field where light vanishes, only to be reborn in random flashes.
Welcome to the dark side of the URWERK force!

A highly protected mechanism
This UR-230 “Black Star” is original in more ways than one. First, there is its structure. Calibre UR-7.30 powering this creation is protected by a hermetic titanium container designed as a mechanical safe. Surrounding this highly protected heart, a composite ceramic case and a black DLC titanium back form the UR-230’s shell: “I love the aesthetics of ceramic and its clean, precise look. It’s a material that’s hard, shiny, beautiful… and incredibly fragile. A single impact and it cracks – yet I didn’t want to give up on this option”, explains Felix Baumgartner, master watchmaker and co-founder of URWERK. “We had to find a solution to fulfil this desire without making any comprises.”

The original, high-performance case of the UR-230 “Black Star” is made from a laminated composite ceramic developed specifically for URWERK: layers of braided ceramic, fibreglass and carbon fibre have been integrated into a polymer matrix. When machined, this unique ceramic reveals a shiny relief. Its flat, smooth surface is illuminated with sparkling dots, creating a dense, vibrant black-light texture.

Vibrant darkness
“While Polaris evoked the brightness of the North Star, Black Star belongs to the interstellar void”, says URWERK’s artistic director and co-founder Martin Frei. “This black is not there to conceal. It breathes. It makes light appear in a setting of shadows. In astrophysics, a Black Star refers to the state of a collapsing star. The star then absorbs light like a black hole, but not completely, just at the cosmic boundary between being and disappearing. URWERK’s ‘Black Star’ embodies this paradoxical presence: a deep, living black that does not deny light but reveals it by draping it in shadows – a glow born from the very heart of the night.”

The UR-230 “Black Star” embodies URWERK’s DNA. This new UR-230 features a satellite complication with wandering hours and a retrograde 3D hand; while a central hub connects three cubic hours satellites. These four-sided blocks move across a 120° sector in 60 minutes. The active hour – the one scrolling along this minutes rail – is taken charge of and put into orbit by an openworked retrograde hand that accompanies it throughout its journey from index 0 to 60. At the end of 60 minutes, the hand instantly flies back to zero to take charge of the next satellite.

Dual turbine system
The UR-230 is a self-winding watch regulated by an exclusive dual turbine system:
– one absorbs external shocks
– the other regulates the air flow of the automatic winding mechanism, acting as a true aerodynamic brake.
A control on the back allows the rotor load to be adjusted or even completely deactivated to switch to manual-winding mode.

Two symmetrical indicators − at 11 o’clock and 1 o’clock − display these settings.

This UR-230 “Black Star” concludes the 230 collection chapter. The end of a story, but with new adventures to follow in 2026…
Until then, Happy New Year!!!

The post The UR-230 “Black Star” plunges URWERK back into Black appeared first on Arab Watch Guide.

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.”

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