BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Have you ever looked at your current wristwatch and thought “Good God I can read the time far too easily on this thing” and you’ve only had €207,000 ($230,000 before tax) to put it right? Well, it’s good news, MB&F’s latest Horological Machine No.11 ‘Architect’ is the watch for you, but you will have to explain it every time you meet someone.
The HM11 really is a work of art, it’s inspired by architecture from the 1960s and 1970s and features a UFO-like case design with four modules on it. Each module, simulating a room, has a different feature of the watch. The main feature is the time which is in the module pointing towards the strap, it’s quite like those watches designed for driving and racing where the time is easily viewable from your wrist, think the Parmigiani Bugatti Mythe piece for example. Polished aluminium orbs indicate the main times, 12, 3, 6, and 9 O’clock and titanium is used for the other orbs which are darker.
Continuing around 90 degrees clockwise is the power reserve ‘room’; this also uses orbs for the display, with the big polished orb indicating the full power reserve, which is 96 hours in this case. The next indicator around is a mechanical thermometer, which is a real rarity on a watch; it can be set to Celsius or Fahrenheit upon request when ordering. The last ‘room’ on the construction is the time setting crown, which clicks outwards to set; it’s also got the MB&F battle-axe motif set in the crystal and allows a full view of the movement. At the centre of it all and underneath the sapphire crystal is the tourbillon, which powers all of the systems except the thermometer.
Did you notice that we haven’t spoken about how this watch is wound yet? Winding the spring barrel of the HM11 ‘Architect’ requires one to rotate the UFO portion of the case. According to MB&F, it only requires ten rotations of the barrel to get back to that full 96-hour power reserve. The case is 42mm x 23mm and can also be rotated in such a way that your preferred indication is more easy to see when wearing it on the wrist.
50 examples will be made in total, 25 in grade 5 titanium with a blue base plate and 25 more in grade 5 titanium with a red gold dial plate. Only MB&F could’ve come up with something as unique as this; I hope I’ll be able to see one in person someday; we need more UFO-shaped watches.
