Progress Through Technology: 10 Tourbillon Watches with High-Tech Designs

Audi’s “progress through technology” motto also applies to the importance of the tourbillon for watch design, because this eye-catching complication greatly enhances a timepiece’s visual appeal. A new trend contributes its fair share, too: many models in 2016 are styled with such a strong emphasis on high tech that their tourbillons fit harmoniously into their overall designs. From WatchTime’s upcoming Special Design Issue 2017, here are 10 of these tourbillon watches.

MB&F Horological Machine No. 6 SV

America’s largest luxury watch show is returning to the Big Apple this fall. The second edition of WatchTime New York will be held at Gotham Hall on October 14-15 (clickhere for event details and to purchase tickets) and will feature an array of luxury watch brands, from large, world-famous manufacturers to innovative independents. Among the latter is MB&F, whose horological highlights will include its most ambitious “Horlogical Machine” to date, the MB&F Horological Machine No. 6 SV.

MB&F Teams With Alain Silberstein for New Legacy Machine

Max Büsser and his team at MB&F collaborated with renowned French watch designer Alain Silberstein in 2009 on the HM2.2 “Black Box,” the first in its series of “Performance Art” timepieces. Today, the brand announces the latest in the series — and one imbued even more deeply with Silberstein’s distinctive design DNA — the MB&F LM1 Silberstein.

The Ulysse Nardin Grand Deck Marine Tourbillon

The Ulysse Nardin Grand Deck Marine Tourbillon, one of the most buzzed-about timepieces introduced at this year’s Baselworld, is a sailboat for the wrist. The dial miniaturizes elements of the deck of a classic racing yacht, including a wood deck, winches, lines and a mainsail boom. The dial is made of inlaid wood in a color and curved design intended to resemble the deck of a classic yacht.

Scales of Time: Urwerk UR-105 “T-Rex”

Watch aficionados are used to seeing reptilian scaled patterns on leather straps, but the new Urwerk UR-105 T-Rex — unveiled at SIHH 2016 in January and equipped with the iconoclastic brand’s unique satellite-hours timekeeping system — may be the first timepiece to bring such a motif to a watch case as well.

Absolute Transparency: Hublot Big Bang Unico Sapphire

Hublot has long been known for its bold use of non-conventional materials and combinations of materials in its watch cases; several years ago, the brand even created its own scratch-resistant “Magic Gold” alloy that it has since used in several watch models. This year, Hublot makes horological history with the first large-scale series of watches with cases cut from pure sapphire blocks.

Mapping Time & Space: Bovet’s Recital 18 “The Shooting Star”

Bovet, which showed its newest timepieces in Geneva last week during SIHH, added to its ultra-complicated Recital collection a watch that is positively cosmic in its level of complexity: the Bovet Recital 18, aka “The Shooting Star.” And while the nickname may appear to have little to do with this watch’s staggering array of functions, it does speak to the sheer, audacious ambition the Fleurier-based brand brought to bear in its creation; horologically speaking, this piece is truly “shooting for the stars.”

Lupe Fiasco – AUTOBOTO

Benny The Butcher – Bust A Brick Nick

Tory Lanez – Mucky James

Lupe Fiasco – 100 Chicagos

Sauce Walka – “Mirror Effect”

21 Savage – “No Debate” / “Big Smoke”

Flamingo at the Cincinnati Zoo

Mt. Gang Rinpoche (Tibet)

Smithsonian.com

Morning Hour

The first one

POLAR BEAR ON ICEBERG

Ibis Fight