UR-112 Aggregat, to the Third Dimension and Beyond

UR-112 Aggregat, to the Third Dimension and Beyond

PRESENTING THE UR-112 AGGREGAT

The UR-112 Aggregat is the latest addition to URWERK’s Special Project collection, a laboratory offering horological freedom and follies encouraged. URWERK co-founders Felix Baumgartner, master watchmaker, and Martin Frei, artistic director and designer, started this new adventure from a blank page. And a sketchbook overflowing with ideas.

 

The UR-112 Aggregat was inspired by a dream of a new mechanical challenge. Technicality has the center stage. The beauty of the UR-112 lies in the complexity of its gears and near-manic assembly precision.

The UR-112 Aggregat heralds the genesis of a watchmaking tour de force.

Aggregat is a compendium of 25.5 grams of distilled technique, offering fully digital time displays, from hours down to seconds. A double or nothing challenge for the watchmaker who is betting with microns. Starting with the hour and the minutes, each are displayed on triangular prisms operating under transparent cylinders, which appear as levitating mechanisms to be admired through the crystal.

On the left, the digital hour display. Each of the 12 numerals is engraved then filled with Super-LumiNova. The transcription of time takes the form of a sign display switching sharply to a chronometric rhythm.

On the right, the same system displays the minutes. Minutes free from the strain of the singular and instead jump in 5-minute increments.

But the primary source of all this power is rooted in the basic movement opposite this Dantesque construction. A long, thin rod connects the body and head of the UR-112. This is the cardan shaft, a central part of vital importance to this mechanism. A complex set of cogs, a succession of gears, allows this axis to transmit all the energy required. And this despite a 90° turnaround. This transmission shaft with double gearing - one at each end - is perpendicular to the horizonal time indication.

“We nicknamed this watch the Aggregat because the UR-112 brings different elements together. From a single source of energy, we power all displays and mechanisms of this UR-112. This force is distributed sparingly, some even "recycled" so that from the digital second at the top of the dial to the dragging minutes and the jumping hours at the opposite extreme, each display receives precisely its required dose of energy with none wasted,” explains Felix Baumgartner.