Norman Foster creates first-ever watch in collaboration with Lebond

British architect Norman Foster has unveiled his first watch, designed with watch brand Lebond in a process he said was “very similar to architecture.”

The mechanical watch has a sleek silhouette with an integrated strap. According to Foster, the design process began with a reevaluation of what we assume a watch should look like.

Drawings and photographs

“We wanted to look again at something very familiar and reconsider it as a complete object, with the case, the strap, the dial and the movement all part of a system,” Foster told Dezeen.

“Normally, you have a watch case and then you attach a strap to it. We started to question the obvious. Why should they feel like two separate objects? Once we began thinking of the strap as a continuation of the case, the whole watch started to come together.”

As a result, the Lebond Norman Foster has a 38.5-millimetre-wide Grade 5 titanium case that widens to 40 millimetres where it connects to the integrated strap, creating a streamlined design.

The architect also got rid of the traditional watch lugs, wrapping the strap around the timepiece’s titanium case instead.

“Removing the conventional lugs gave us the continuous profile, but it also made the watch more comfortable and more integrated,” Foster explained.

Person in blue jumper wearing metal watch

The Lebond Norman Foster, with its distinctive rotor, also evokes aviation design – a reference to Foster’s interest in flying, as well as to his history of international travel.

This comes across in a very practical way, with the watch’s bidirectional rotating 12-hour bezel allowing the wearer to read a second time zone using the main hour hand.

Its dial is protected by a domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating, and the watch is water-resistant to 50 metres.

It is currently available in two versions: the Natural Titanium Edition, which has a micro-sandblasted titanium case, a brushed-metal dial and a grey rubber strap, and the Black Edition, which features a matte black DLC-coated titanium case matched with a black lacquered dial and hands and a black rubber strap.

Foster designed the watch to allow people to customise it, swapping cases and straps at will, and more versions will be released over time.

“A watch is intensely personal. You wear it, you travel with it and it becomes part of your everyday life,” Foster said. “This led to the potential for a wide range of colour combinations and the ability to customise the watch”

“By designing an easy attachment mechanism, the user is able to interchange elements and create personal versions,” he continued.

“I proposed a watch that could move naturally between very different situations, working in the studio, being on a building site, travelling or going somewhere formal. It should not feel precious or limited to one particular setting.”

This marks the first time that Foster, who is known as the most successful architect in history, has designed a watch, but he didn’t find the process daunting.

“I have never really thought that scale changes the nature of design,” Foster said. “Whether it is a city, a building, a chair or a watch, you are still asking the same questions: how does it work, how is it made, and how do all the parts come together?”

“The process is also very similar to architecture,” he continued.

“It becomes one of refinement, sketches, prototypes, adjustments and then more adjustments. You explore options to finally arrive at the essential idea and then you keep refining it until everything seems inevitable.”

Last year, in celebration of Foster’s 90th birthday, we looked at twelve defining projects from his long career. Next month, the architect will give the keynote speech at the Dezeen Awards party.