Oris - In the Atelier: Lukas Bühlmann on Designing the Oris Big Crown ProPilot X Calibre 115 (2019)

Oris - In the Atelier Series - Episode 1: When everything comes together - Oris’s Senior Product Design Engineer Lukas Bühlmann on the design process behind the Oris Big Crown ProPilot X Calibre 115. Behind the watch: How many of us really know how the technology around us works? As in, how the nuts and bolts come together to do what they do? How many can really grasp how a connected device taps into the great invisible network in the sky? It won’t be many. The advances of our age have distanced us from a tangible knowledge of how the things we own work. In one sense, we’re content to embrace that. Smartphones, a common example, are tools we use for work. They bring us together so we can share stories and ideas. These are good things. But while they enable us at their best, they enslave us at their worst. And because we don’t understand how they work, it can be hard to trust them; to really know them. Which we’re increasingly uncomfortable with. This vein of thinking goes a long way to explaining why mechanical watches, dreamed up generations ago, are more relevant today than ever. No electronics. No connectivity. No apps. No smoke and mirrors. Archaic? Or enlightened? By comparison, a mechanical watch is a hand-crafted object we can connect with in the most natural sense. If we don’t move, an automatic runs out of power. If we don’t wind the crown every couple of days, a hand-wound watch will stop. The connection is tangible. At Oris, we decided to look into the es