Edge Of Tomorrow

Renowned for its precision timepieces, Omega now has a stunning new Swiss manufacture that’s a marvel of high-tech efficiency and sustainability. Christian Barker highlights six of its outstanding features.

- Christian Barker

Leading watchmaker Omega recently completed construction of a high-tech factory in the Swiss town of Bienne, a development more than a decade in the making. The five-storey, 15,000-square-metre building on a site Omega has occupied since 1882 was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who is renowned for his ecologically focused, East-meets-West approach.

Speaking at the official opening of the building late last year, Nicholas Hayek, the CEO of Omega’s parent company, the Swatch Group, said the new structure reflected the company’s position as “a pioneer of innovation and excellence in the Swiss watch industry and worldwide. The strong tradition of investing in new technologies, new methods of production, but also in its own employees can again be seen through the achievement of this splendid new Omega factory.”

Not only at the cutting edge in terms of its centralised watch assembly, testing, training and quality-control facilities (which has resulted in greatly streamlined production efficiency), the remarkable new building is also highly environmentally friendly and boasts a host of attributes designed to make for a safer, cleaner, more pleasant working experience for employees. In the words of Omega CEO Raynald Aeschlimann, it’s a “truly innovative workspace.”

Here are a few of the manufacture’s most impressive and interesting features.

DESIGN