Inspiration can strike at any time, literally in the case of some of the most eye-catching, precisely designed watches on the planet from the haute horologists at Urwerk. From the creators of the otherworldly Urwerk “Spacetime Blade” comes a watch that’s more approachable on the surface, yet built with a touch of design-focused venom within.
The Swiss watchmaker, in the business for more than a quarter-century, just debuted the Urwerk UR-150 Scorpion, which takes its design cues from the sharp intensity of, yes, a scorpion’s stinger. The company took its satellite complication and revamped it from another angle entirely, billed as a “new mechanism for a new scenography.”
At the heart of the UR-15O Scorpion is a “lightning sting” device with what the horologist calls a “lethal function, triggered in a hundredth of a second.” Based on the trajectory of the watch’s 240-degree minutes sector, the timepiece also boasts a retrograde minutes hand with a similar scorpion-like design, one the company calls “fast and fearsome.”
An open-worked hand frames the hour, arcing over the minutes track and then jumping back to zero every 60 minutes. Ingenious and utterly eye-catching certainly doesn’t begin to cover it. As with other Urwerk creations, its satellites also spin simultaneously, and here’s where the scorpion strike comes into play: This all takes place in 1/100th of a second.
“We’ve once again chosen an evocative nickname for our creation,” and the scorpion is indeed a nasty beast – yet the design of the UR-150 is gentle,” said Urwerk Master Watchmaker and Co-founder Felix Baumgartner, adding that “it’s very URWERK …the aggressive symbolism belies the reality of the watch’s cool, calm personality.”
The craft inherent in such a journey required a revamped approach by Urwerk, Baumgartner said of the retooled movement. Baumgartner notes that to drive its satellites, guide the hour hand and position each jump at the right time, the complication takes its cues from “a flying wheel and pinion positioned between the satellites and the base movement.”
Baumgartner added that the movement “deciphers and follows the ‘guiding thread’ of a cam,” and the complication includes a spring custom-designed by Urwerk in its workshop. It’s a detail that truly makes the difference in an industry where precision is of the essence.
The impossibly intricate watch and its minutes display are billed by the horologist as “more expansive and more ambitious,” and the manufacturer-meets-watchmaker-meets-design-firm calls the inner workings of the UR-150 “the most ambitious ever undertaken” within its workshop. Urwerk Creative Director and Co-founder Martin Frei called the timepiece and its striking design fusion “an evolutionary process” that blends a hard-stinging scorpion with a softer, rounder case shape.
Accordingly, such a watch takes acute time and intense craftsmanship to design, and just 50 pieces of two variations (one in Titan and one in Dark) are available. None of it comes cheap, either: The Titan UR-150 retails for about $103,000, while its counterpart retails for about $105,000, not including tax. Of the watch, Frei said that “everything is a matter of detail, a game of positioning,” and Urwerk looks to have risen to the occasion once more with a new design sure to turn heads upon closer inspection.
