How Urwerk’s Otherworldly New Watch Tracks Movement in the Cosmos
When seasoned collectors think of Urwerk—the independent watchmaker founded by Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei in 1997—they likely picture the satellite (or “wandering”) hours complication. Developed in the 17th century, the system displays the time with an orbital disc (or discs) that indicates the hour and points to the minute along an arc that sits on the periphery of the dial.
And though the complication is now an Urwerk signature, the Genevan maison has plenty of other horological tricks up its sleeve. To wit: Check out the brand-new UR-10 Spacemeter ($94,000). With its integrated bracelet and rather conventional syringe-style hands, it appears—at first glance, at least—like a luxuryLuxuryA lifestyle defined by exceptional quality, craftsmanship, exclusivity, and sophistication, encompassing the finest products, services, and experiences that represent the highest standards of refinement and excellence.Go to Luxury Glossary sports watch. A closer examination of the model’s three subdials, not to mention its lack of pushers, quickly reveals that this is not a standard chronograph, but an orbital distance tracker.
Inspired by a 19th-century clock that Baumgartner’s watchmaker father, Gérard, restored, the Spacemeter is a miniature astronomical complication and tracks the distances traveled by several heavenly bodies. The counter at two o’clock measures every 10 kilometers the Earth travels in its daily rotation (in increments of 500 meters), while another one at four o’clock tracks every 1,000 kilometers the sun has moved, calibrated in 20-kilometer steps.
Finally, at nine o’clock, is a counter called Orbit that combines these two trajectories into a single totalizer, measuring every 1,000 kilometers of the Earth’s rotation and every 64,000 kilometers of the solar orbit on synchronized blue and white scales. (Flip the watch over, and you’ll find a 24-hour track, as well as indications for the Earth’s rotation and revolution over a 24-hour period.)
If you’re wondering why you’d ever possibly need this information, you may be overthinking things: This is 2025, after all, and most mechanical watches are vestigial appendages of an increasingly distant technological era. But if you can suspend your disbelief for a moment, the beauty of the UR-10 Spacemeter—which is available in a limited edition of 25 titanium dials and 25 black dials—captures a bigger picture.
“Change unfolds because we move—through space, through moments, through existence,” Frei tells Robb Report. “In its mechanical choreography, the UR-10 reminds us that time is not something we observe. It is something we inhabit.”
This article originally appeared in Robb Report US.