279 articles found · page 1 of 10
Fratello
When I went hands-on with the Ulysse Nardin × Urwerk UR-Freak late last year, I walked away genuinely surprised, and that doesn’t happen to me much anymore. I never saw that partnership coming. Ulysse Nardin had never made a collaboration watch in its modern history, and Urwerk has always felt like a creative universe of […] Visit Five High-End Watch Collaborations I’d Love To See Happen to read the full article.
Monochrome
Whenever Urwerk bids farewell to one of its watches, you know they will give it a special send-off. In the past, we’ve seen some excellent final salutes, such as the UR-10 SpaceMeter Blue, the UR-230 Black Star and the excellent UR-220 RG. And today it’s time to bid adieu to one of Urwerk’s coolest space-inspired […]
Deployant
Urwerk releases the final edition of their UR-120 in a blue and gold colourway which they dedicate to Earth. This novelty is called the UR-120 Blue Planet.
Fratello
Calling an Urwerk traditional feels a bit ridiculous, but here we are. The new UR-10 Spacemeter gets closer to that territory than just about anything the brand has done before. And yes, we did get a traditional Urwerk before we got Grand Theft Auto VI. Sure, Urwerk has used hands in pieces like the EMC […] Visit The UR-10 Spacemeter Is the Most Traditional Urwerk Yet… Sort Of to read the full article.
Deployant
Urwerk releases the final version of their extraordinary UR-10 Spacemaster, now with a blue dial in the same titanium/steel case and bracelet.
SJX Watches
Urwerk bids farewell to the Spacemeter with UR-10 Spacemeter Blue Final Edition. As the final series of the UR-10, the 25-piece limited edition features a dark blue dial that differentiates it from the black and silver editions released previously. The watch is otherwise identical to its predecessors, and features an instrument panel-like display that tracks the progress of the Earth around both the sun and its own axis. Initial thoughts The ‘almost conventional’ display of the UR-10 represents a departure for Urwerk, which made its name in satellite wandering hours complications. Like the quirky and impressive EMC, the UR-10 proves Urwerk’s space-age aesthetic works in a variety of formats. But the Spacemeter’s time on Earth was relatively short, having been launched less than a year ago. The limited production of just 75 pieces (25 in each of three colours) should reward collectors, but I’m hopeful the ergonomic case and bracelet will come out of retirement to house different complications in the future. The UR-10 borrows a number of stylistic cues from the UR-100, but the case construction is entirely novel. The 45.4 mm case is essentially a bi-level construction — stainless steel on the bottom for a stable weight balance, and titanium on top for a continuous look from case to bracelet. The two materials contrast slightly on the winglets on either side of the case, where they are fastened with bolts. This construction is similar to that of the original Pate...
Monochrome
Urwerk, the indie brand founded by Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner in 1997, is renowned for its futuristic, aerodynamic vessels with kinetic satellite hour displays. In 2025, Urwerk released the UR-10 SpaceMeter, a watch that initially stumped fans with its round dial and conventional hour and minute hands. However, closer inspection revealed Urwerk’s fascination with […]
Monochrome
Independent watchmaking has always been a crucible of creativity and doing things off the beaten path, and that’s exactly the reason why we love the genre so much. From industry legends and trailblazers such as Daniel Roth, Urwerk and MB&F;, to the newest generation of stars, the indie watchmaking scene is truly unique. And while […]
Monochrome
The UR-101 is the watch that started it all for indie brand Urwerk. First introduced in 1997 alongside the UR-102, it laid the groundwork for the brand’s signature wandering hours display and its radical approach to time indication. After recently bringing the UR-101 back into the collection with a bold, textured T-Rex edition, Urwerk moves […]
Hodinkee
If a hyper-futuristic Urwerk wasn't enough of a statement, you can now wear a ceramic example that tells you how long it will take for light to reach planets you'll never visit.
SJX Watches
Urwerk continues to iterate its most accessible model with the UR-100V “LightSpeed” Ceramic. The Lightspeed is essentially a variation of an earlier model, with ceramic composite replacing carbon composite. The ceramic composite incorporates fibreglass and carbon fibre, giving it a textured surface and greater strength. Though it’s relatively affordable compared to other Urwerk models, the UR-100V still retains the brand’s signature elements, including a wandering hours display and various astronomical-time indicators on the dial. Initial thoughts The UR-100V now exists in a multitude of variations, perhaps too many, but the Lightspeed stands out as one of the most interesting in both material and style. The ceramic composite case is appealing for both its appearance and utility – it is hard, strong, and lightweight – and is being used for the first time by Urwerk. It also doesn’t cost that much more than earlier versions of the model, making this iteration more compelling. More broadly, I would have liked Urwerk to vary the display across the UR-100V line, beyond the case material, making each iteration more distinct. As they stand, most share the same dial and indications, with only the case changing for each edition. Light and white Because the case is a ceramic composite rather than pure ceramic, it has a textured surface with a slight glossiness. These characteristics stem from the fibreglass and carbon fibre sheets within the composite, explaining the w...
Fratello
Urwerk is always up to something fun, and today’s new UR-100V Lightspeed Ceramic is proof. While we’ve seen this complication before, it now comes with some novel material innovations. Let’s have a closer look. It doesn’t feel like so long ago that we were visiting Urwerk’s headquarters during Geneva Watch Days. However, only six months […] Visit Introducing: The Urwerk UR-100V Lightspeed Ceramic to read the full article.
Worn & Wound
The Urwerk UR-100 has become one of my favorite designs in high end independent watchmaking. Whenever I encounter one (a rare event given the brand’s annual production of just around 200 watches total) I’m blown away by the way it distills the essence of the brand into a completely wearable, compact, package. I’ve always been a fan of the Urwerk philosophy, but until I tried on a UR-100 I always felt the watches themselves might be too ungainly or oddly shaped for me personally. There’s something about this case though, mostly its impressive thinness, that makes it feel like a “normal” watch on the wrist but still something otherworldly when you look down to check the time. That, to me, feels like a sweet spot. The latest from Urwerk brings a new watch into the UR-100 lineage with the UR-100V LS Ceramic. This is effectively a new variant of the original UR-100V LS (short for “light speed,” which we’ll get to momentarily) that appeared in 2024. The new watch features a white ceramic case, a first for the brand and more complex than it first appears, and the same whimsical ideology of its predecessor, and many other Urwerk watches, which are all in one way or another a commentary on timekeeping itself. All Urwerks (well, almost all) share a common wandering hour satellite time telling mechanism that has become their calling card. It’s actually a rather mechanically elegant way to tell the time, basically with a wandering hour “pointer” to a fixed ...
Revolution
Monochrome
Urwerk’s mechanical ingenuity and sci-fi vessels have propelled the brand into the realm of cosmic watchmaking. Renowned for their wandering hour and satellite indications, founders Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner captured the three dimensions of time, rotation and orbit with the UR-100 SpaceTime of 2019. An evolution of the UR-100, the UR-100V returns to Earth […]
Hodinkee
Even the most normal-looking Urwerk is still incredibly unconventional.
Monochrome
For every good story, there is an end. First presented in 2023, the UR-230 series was Urwerk’s latest creation in the beloved 200 series, following the long-lived UR-210 and the short-lived UR-220. Built around the same design principles as its predecessors, and still featuring the immediately recognisable satellite display we have loved since 2006, the […]
SJX Watches
Urwerk’s latest satellite-display creation, the UR-230 Black Star, builds on more than two decades of the brand redefining the wandering hours complication. A concept first teased in the Harry Winston Opus 5 and later perfected in the UR-210, the retrograde-satellite display has become synonymous with Urwerk’s identity, and the Black Star demonstrates how far the idea has come. With a lightweight fibreglass-reinforced ceramic case, the Black Star is a 35-piece limited edition that looks to be the final instalment of the UR-230 series. Initial thoughts Urwerk didn’t invent the wandering hours display, but the brand deserves credit for dragging the complication into modernity in the late 1990s. While the brand has dabbled in watches with conventional hands, it’s still the satellite time display that carries the essence of Urwerk’s DNA. The UR-230 traces its roots back to the 2012 launch of the UR-210, which introduced the retrograde frame that travels with the satellite cube for hours. The concept for a retrograde hand paired with wandering hours dates back even further, to the 2005 launch of the Harry Winston Opus 5, which was also designed by Urwerk. While the concept has subsequently been elaborated with the UR-150 Scorpion, the UR-230 still looks strikingly advanced even after all these years. The latest black-and-yellow livery seems to be the flavour of the day, closely matching the brand’s recent collaboration with Ulysse Nardin. The signature detail of the...
Deployant
Urwerk releases the final edition of their UR-230 collection with a new version which they call the Black Star. This concludes the trilogy.
Revolution
Hodinkee
Two of the boldest design approaches in independent watchmaking have been brought together-and it works.
Monochrome
Not many contemporary watchmaking creations have influenced our perception of time display as dramatically as the 2001 Ulysse Nardin Freak and Urwerk’s wandering-hour satellites. Both were born from the late-1990s creative surge, when mechanical horology strongly demonstrated its experimental and innovative spirit. Ulysse Nardin’s Freak redefined the mechanical wristwatch by eliminating the dial, hands, and […]
Revolution
![Hands-On With The New Ulysse Nardin × Urwerk Ur-Freak [Live Photos]](https://www.fratellowatches.com/cdn-cgi/image/anim=false/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Urwerk-x-Ulyyse-Nardin-UR-FREAK-69-scaled.jpg)
Fratello
Some watches catch you off guard, and then there are the ones that genuinely stop you in your tracks. The Ulysse Nardin × Urwerk Ur-Freak belongs firmly in the latter camp. I first saw it during Geneva Watch Days a couple of months back, inside Ulysse Nardin’s boutique, when someone slid a non-disclosure agreement across […] Visit Hands-On With The New Ulysse Nardin × Urwerk Ur-Freak [Live Photos] to read the full article.
SJX Watches
The Ulysse Nardin UR-Freak brings together two of contemporary watchmaking’s most inventive forces. A collaboration between Ulysse Nardin and Urwerk, it merges the Freak’s revolving-movement architecture with Urwerk’s signature wandering hours display to create something that feels both inevitable and extraordinary. The partnership amplifies the strengths of each brand: Ulysse Nardin’s mastery of silicon technology and mechanical architecture, and Urwerk’s futuristic approach to time display. More than a meeting of aesthetics, the UR-Freak unites two brands that have long challenged convention. Both rose to prominence around the turn of the millennium by rewriting mechanical rules-Ulysse Nardin with its revolutionary 2001 Freak, and Urwerk with its satellite-hour timepieces that reimagined a traditional complication. Two decades later, their paths converge with a 100-piece limited edition in sandblasted titanium. Initial thoughts Some collaborations seem obvious in hindsight; the Ulysse Nardin UR-Freak is one of them. The collaboration plays to the strengths of both brands, with Urwerk’s signature wandering hours display plugging seamlessly into the UN Freak architecture. It turns out that Urwerk’s signature satellite wandering hours display feels right at home grafted onto Uylsse Nardin’s flagship. Frankly, they could have left it at that and called it a day. But the fact is Ulysse Nardin went the extra step to reimagine the Freak’s signature flying to...
Time+Tide
The Urwerk x Ulysse Nardin UR-Freak blends signature time-telling and technology elements from both avant-garde brands in a very natural way.The post Urwerk and Ulysse Nardin team up for an unexpected collaboration we really should’ve expected appeared first on Time+Tide Watches.
Monochrome
Urwerk has spent nearly three decades rewriting the rules of how a wristwatch tells time. Since Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner founded the brand in 1997, the core idea has stayed very consistent: wandering satellite hours sweeping past retrograde minutes, executed as a sort of kinetic sculpture. Models like the UR-103 put the satellite carousel […]
Fratello
When a watch with hands looks alien, it must be an Urwerk. Recently, the brand introduced a non-digital watch that measures time and space with traditional hands on a round dial while still managing to make your watch brain feel weightless. I was spacing out with the Urwerk UR-10 Spacemeter when it was still under […] Visit Spacing Out With The New Urwerk UR-10 Spacemeter - A Watch That Measures Time And Space to read the full article.
Deployant
Urwerk, a rebel who breaks rules on watches, break their own rules and releases the UR-10 SpaceMaster with a round case, a dial, and hands.
Worn & Wound
Just when you think you know an indie brand, they go ahead and make a watch that looks kind of normal. That was one of the initial thoughts running through my head when the Urwerk team showed us the new UR-10 SpaceMeter during our Geneva Watch Days meeting last month. It is, without question, one of the most confounding releases in the brand’s history. This is a brand that has singlehandedly carved out a niche for themselves with highly technical, futuristic timepieces that employ wandering and satellite hours complications in innovative and unique ways. Their watches are usually not circular, they do not have traditional hands, and they don’t even really have what we’d think of as complications in a traditional sense. But the UR-10 proves that even when a brand has defined a category, there’s still plenty of opportunity to surprise with something new. The concept of the SpaceMeter is to, unsurprisingly, measure space. That’s a pretty heady concept, but it’s rooted in classical watchmaking that has always been an influence on brand founders Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei. In the case of the UR-10, the inspiration comes directly from an important clock in Baumgartner’s life, a 19th century pendulum clock signed by Gustave Sandoz. The unusual clock belonged to Baumgartner’s father, and upon taking ownership apparently had little idea of exactly what the subdials were meant to track. After a lot of research, Baumgartner determined that the clock was desig...
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