MB&F’s Clock Machine 11 “Architect” – a house on your wrist
Drawing on Büsser's love of 1960s design, this new high quality replica watches fills more rooms than a New York City apartment and is one of the most charming MB&F designs to date.
It’s poetic that MB&F chose to launch the HM11 “Architect” the day before Dubai Watch Week in the country that Büsser has called home since 2014. Paradoxically, this watch seems to be the furthest away from home among Büsser’s recent Horological Machine designs that have become Büsser’s hometown. (I hate to say it) Auto industry is generally predictable. But as the brand tells me, this is "home on the wrist."
No, this isn't a comment on the typically massive size of MB&F watches, although here it measures a relatively small 42mm wide and a (still quite large) 23mm thick. That's nothing compared to the price of the HM-11. Most of MB&F's horological machines look like "things" (many of them are cars, some of them unintentionally - well - resemble the eggplant emoji). This time around, the watch draws inspiration from the futuristic architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, blending modernist and organic architectural philosophies. There's no denying it's one of the brand's most creative and interesting designs. replica MB&F HM11 Watches
It's not too far off from Matti Suuronen's Futuro House, the Finnish designer's 1970 fiberglass-reinforced plastic design, which was met with some of the same hostility (or at least suspicion) that I often see with MB&F HM ). Adjusting for inflation, Futuro costs less. The holes look a bit like a cross between Anti Lovage's "Burles Palace" (sans the water feature) and Charles Hartling's "Brenton House." In fact, Bussell admits that while his wife doesn't like living in the buildings, he does. It was a “Brenton House” post on Instagram that made Büsser think “this would be a good watch.”
Like any of the above builds, I wouldn't say that I really feel like any HM really suits me (other than the HM5 or HM8 Mark II). But I still try to at least explain them and understand their appeal.
Looking back to the 1960s and 1970s, architects of the time often sought to move away from traditional design languages that, while comfortable and accessible to the masses, failed to evolve to take advantage of modern construction techniques, materials, and engineering capabilities. If this sounds familiar, it’s no surprise that the efforts of these architects and their modern approach to design have (unsurprisingly) fascinated Büsser for years. The same challenges that Büsser's team had to learn to overcome—sapphire crystal that was nearly impossible to shape, titanium that was difficult to machine—came into play here. But instead of looking to the automotive industry, as the team has done in the past, design lead Eric Giroud used his background in architecture to design the HM11's layout. replica Urwerk UR-230 Eagle
Büsser and Giroud envisioned HM11 as a house with four rooms. It's a bit like Monsanto's "Home of Tomorrow", with a central area and branching useful spaces based on it. In the middle space of the HM11 is the one-minute counter-rotating central flying tourbillon beneath a double-domed sapphire crystal. The watch is available in two colours, one in PVD-coated “Ozone Blue” plate and the other in 5N gold, in quantities of 25 pieces each. But as dramatic as they were, the real party took place in a side room of the HM11 house.
On a practical level, the HM11 is read like every horological machine since the HM3: on the wrist at an angle. For that matter, this is probably the most unidentifiable horological machine MB&F has ever made. I'm lucky enough to have 20/20 vision, and I'm usually the last to decry the legibility of even the most unusual combinations of dial colors, handsets, or odd displays (like the Cartier Tank à Guichet). In fact, I have a hard time remembering this in these comments – call it a “tree for forest” situation. But in both cases – and here too – the redeeming factor is that these are less utilitarian watches than sculptural horological machines for the wrist – as the name makes clear. If you want legibility and practicality, head to MB&F's "Legacy Machine" collection and pick your poison. Even the LM isn't the clearest replica watches for sale on the market, but it's not the watch you want to buy anyway.
In this case, what you're actually buying is a thoughtful homage to some of the greatest designers of the 1960s and 1970s that goes a step further than a monolithic pod design. For example: In the first of the four rooms, you can see a small monitor with two white arrow pointers with red tips. And they are very small, about 0.6 mm. The hands point to metal balls on short stems that radiate out from the center of the display - silver for every quarter hour and brass for every five minutes. Its timing is derived from the "Horloge Vitra" ball clock by American industrial designer George Nelson. This design is so deeply imprinted in my memory that I never questioned who it was before I saw HM11. Creative. All of this is housed in a window that's about 11.45mm high, so it's not the largest face of the watch, to say the least.
To transform the horizontal plane of the tourbillon movement into the vertical display of the watch (and the rest of the room we'll get to), the brand continues to rely on bevel gears, which are more visible here than on any other HM I can remember, making it The perfect way to study the originality that makes MB&F watches so striking.
As with most modern construction projects, energy efficiency is key, and HM11 acknowledges this in two ways. The first one is in room two. There you'll find a similar power reserve display that counts down the 96 hours of power reserve in the mainspring.
To get from the first room to the second, no twisting is required. Instead, the watch rotates one way around a central axis fairly intuitively, locking into place every 45 or 90 degrees with a slight twist so that it doesn't spin freely. In fact, if you only turn it 45 degrees, it's almost more easily considered a "driver's" watch. All of this is suspended from a lightweight titanium frame with long lugs.
Today, room number three has something new and unusual: a thermometer, with temperatures in Celsius or Fahrenheit. In fact, this makes it one of the few modern mechanical watches to feature a thermometer. While these types of complications used to be made in pocket watches (I seem to remember seeing one from Jules Jurgensen, for example), in the modern market I can only think of Another watch from Ball. The watch requires the wearer to remove it from their wrist for a period of time, otherwise their body temperature will interfere with the function of the thermometer - essentially it will read your temperature throughout the day. The new HM11 does not have this problem.
All things considered, this is a very clever (though perhaps not very useful) inclusion, if for no other reason than that the thermometer's design capitalizes on the existing skills of MB&F's watchmakers. This watch uses a spring thermometer, a metal coil that expands when the temperature rises and contracts when the temperature cools. Just as a watchmaker learns how to operate a hairspring, these skills obviously apply to regulating a thermometer.
The final "room" is located at three o'clock on a regular buy watch replica - at least, if the watch is set up to tell the time. This room is not another function, but a transparent crystal crown for time setting. The brand calls this room the front door of the watch. This is a fitting place for a crown, but this is no ordinary crown.
While a regular crown requires a 2 mm spacer, the large size of this crown requires reconsideration. Instead, two sets of washers are used, creating a kind of double airlock, with the crown having a total of eight washers (out of 19 used in the watch). This makes the watch water resistant to 20m. But the size of the crown poses a problem. In the original design of the watch, any immediate attempt to pull the crown out would cause it to be sucked back by the vacuum of the small amount of air inside the domed crystal? The solution is to increase the volume of the crown to reduce the effects of small changes in volume when the crown is pulled out. Most brands are working on making their watches thinner, which is an interesting but smart and necessary change.
One thing you'll notice when wearing the watch is that the crown doesn't actually wind the movement. However, it is a manually wound watch. I mentioned that energy efficiency is key, and the fact that the "house" pivots on the foundation is more than just a living room trick. Each 45° clockwise rotation not only gives you a tactile click, but also provides 72 minutes of power directly to the barrel. After completing 10 revolutions, the HM11 reaches maximum power.
For all the tech specs and creative features, I'm probably missing something. But I've also glossed over an important question: How does this watch wear? Well, I'm guessing that even with the high price of the HM11, there are still 50 enthusiastic buyers, many of whom, like me, probably saw a preview of this watch and made their own decision on the matter. I doubt buyers really care that much about how the watch wears. For people who can't afford a watch, I bet a lot of people will say that wearability doesn't matter. I can tell you that I'm surprised at how comfortable it sits on my wrist at 42mm (2mm thinner than the Sequential Evo) and doesn't feel as thick as the 23mm version. It can even be placed under shirt cuffs. But you are right. None of this matters.
The most important fact is that Büsser is doing what he has always done: thinking outside the box, and it challenges the way we think about watches. It may not be as technologically innovative as last year's Sequential Evo, nor is it as quintessentially Büsser's design as I consider the LM-101 to be. But in an age where so many brands are either homogenizing their products (trust me, I keep getting press releases from new brands who create the same watches as many other brands), or falling into complacency, at least some It's a relief because I know I can once again expect Büsser and his team to surprise us. replica Patek Philippe Nautilus
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