Urwerk

Brand history

Founded in 1997 by watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and designer Martin Frei in Geneva. Urwerk is named after the ancient Sumerian city Ur and the German word for movement (Uhrwerk), encapsulating its mission to reinvent how time is displayed.

Founded 1997 in Geneva by watchmaker Felix Baumgartner and artist Martin Frei. The brand is built around one idea: rotating satellite-hour displays that orbit around a central axis, with the minutes read from the passing satellite against a fixed scale. The UR-105 (the catalog reference) uses this architecture in a compact case, three satellites each carrying four hour numerals, the visible satellite in the "window" showing the current hour, the minutes from a running scale alongside. Urwerk is in the independent haute-horlogerie conversation (F.P. Journe, MB&F, De Bethune) and produces roughly 150 watches per year. The visual language is sci-fi-industrial, matte titanium, angular architecture, visible mechanism, and unmistakably Urwerk. The buyer's note: Urwerk is one of the clearest examples of a watch brand with a single defining idea executed at high finishing quality rather than attempting to be a broad catalog brand.