Space Odyssey

The Urwerk UR-112 Aggregat Odyssey, priced at $270,000, refines what a wristwatch can do

- By Jared Paul Stern

Very few ultra-high-end watch brands can claim to be doing something radically different than the competition. MB&F, Jacob & Co. and Richard Mille all inhabit this rarefied stratum, and Urwerk, the avant-garde Swiss watchmaker founded in 1997, should surely be part of the club. Urwerk's dynamic duo of Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner have now been turning the world of haute horology on its head for 25 years, with seemingly impossible feats of mechanical design and engineering.

Having broken the mold several times, they are now, a quarter-century into their history, refining some of their best-received concepts. And hence we have the new bare-metal limited edition UR-112 Aggregat Odyssey. Urwerk cites spacecraft from Star Wars, Watchmen, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica as the inspiration for the titanium and steel tour-de-force, limited to just five examples priced at about $270,000 a piece.