The name may seem strange at first sight, but Søren Jenry Petersen, the President and CEO of Urban Jürgensen, first had the idea for this watch before he even took over the brand five years ago. As a self-styled “product renaissance” man he was looking to bring classical elements into a product category where innovation has been sorely lacking for nearly 40 years. He sought inspiration from the world of architecture, in particular the philosophy of Roman architect Virtuvius, who espoused the three qualities of firmitatis, utilitatis and venustatis (stability, utility and beauty) for his designs.
The initial brief was for a men’s watch that could be instantly recognized from a distance of five metres with a classic, elegant, robust and simple design and with a water resistance of 120 to 300 metres. But when this initial brief was devised, Mr Petersen considered that it was too early for the brand to launch such a watch. “First we needed to communicate the legacy and history of the brand,” he says.
Now it would appear that the time is right and the Jürgensen One debuts at Baselworld 2019. Its design has evolved from initial sketches that featured circles within circles as the traditional watch shape was reduced to its very essence. The result is a very fluid, almost organic, shape with a perfect harmony that sets it apart as a timepiece of distinction that has been built to last.
As with all the best designs, its simplicity belies a huge amount of work and detail that has gone into this watch. The case is in medical grade 1.4441 steel, which is the quality used for medical implants, and consists of seven separate pieces. Its surfaces are satin-finished and mirror polished and the lugs are individually soldered. To keep the harmony of the design, the lugs are also not parallel, which means that the bracelet has to be fitted from behind the lugs. The bracelet, in the same medical-grade steel, has a tapered, semi-flexible design with satin-finished links and mirror-polished oval centre links.
The Jürgensen One is available in a three-hand version with soft-white, charcoal grey and Urban blue dials and a GMT model available exclusively with the Urban Blue dial. The dials are produced as solid one-piece dials and feature a chapter ring with a grenage finish, mirror-polished hour markers with SuperLuminova and a engine-turned wave pattern centre decoration. The hands are open-worked and hand-finished in solid steel, with the unmistakable diamond-polished eye on the hour hand that is typical of Urban Jürgensen.
Power comes from the Urban Jürgensen P5 self-winding movement with stop-seconds and a 22-carat gold oscillating weight. The movement operates at 21,600 vibrations per hour and has twin barrels for a power reserve of 72 hours. The GMT version of the movement has a particularly intuitive operation, with pushers at 8 o’clock and 10 o’clock on the case moving the central GMT hand forwards or backwards in one-hour increments, taking the date change into account in both directions. With a diameter of 32mm and height of 6.1mm for the three-hand version and 6.6mm for the GMT, the P5 movement fits perfectly inside the 41mm case, which is water resistant to 120 metres.
Urban Jürgensen is moving with the times as far as deliveries are concerned. Presented at Baselworld, the three-hand models (Ref. 5241) will be available for purchase as early as April, while the GMT version (Ref. 5541) will follow in June. Like all Urban Jürgensen watches, the Jürgensen One will be rare, although Mr Petersen stresses that all orders will be accepted and the watches delivered as soon as possible.
