Raise The Roof

Located on the outskirts of Geneva, the municipality of Plan-les-Ouates is where some of the world’s most beautiful watch brands are headquartered, thus earning it the unofficial nickname of Plan-les-Watches.

- Celine Yap

Patek Philippe was the first brand to build a manufacture in this suburban district, uniting all of its various business activities previously situated in more than a dozen places throughout Switzerland. It was also the country’s biggest watch manufacture at the time. To commemorate the occasion, the brand released two special-edition models: Ref. 5500 Pagoda and the minute repeater Ref. 5029.

That was in 1996, during a decade in which mechanical watchmaking went through a rebirth. From the late 1990s to the present day, the industry has grown in leaps and bounds – and so has Patek Philippe. As massive as it was then, the manufacture soon became too small to cope with the company’s vigorous growth and the need to move some of its production units to a different location returned. Patek Philippe soon found a suitable manufacturing facility in nearby Perly for what it calls the exterior operations: the production of watch cases and bracelets as well as gem setting.

But as an independent family-owned business, the vision of a mega-manufacture that once again houses all of its most exalted handcrafts and state-of-the-art technologies remained firmly etched into Patek Philippe’s vision. So when Thierry Stern took over the organisation in 2009, his family swiftly began to put that plan into motion, in addition to establishing the Patek Philippe Seal and releasing its first true in-house integrated chronograph. Looking at its enormous parking lot, which was adjacent to the manufacture, the Sterns envisioned a new production building that would meld traditional watchmaking with modern architecture.