CAUNY

Founded in 1927 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, Cauny was one of the most emblematic watch brands of the mid-twentieth century. Under the pioneering leadership of Mireille Grebler, the first woman to lead a watch brand, Cauny established an enduring ideal: creating timepieces of original design and fine materials, accessible to anyone who values elegance and precision. Once carried across the world on smuggling ships, its watches came to embody a quiet sophistication that transcended time and geography. Today, headquartered in Portugal and directed by Filipe Costa Almeida, Cauny continues to revive that spirit through new collaborations that merge architecture, design, and craftsmanship.

This vision finds its purest expression in The Architects of Time series, a collection that invites some of the world’s greatest architects to design a watch, an object where time itself becomes material. For Cauny, architecture and horology share a single ambition: to measure and give form to the passing of time while preserving a sense of permanence. The project brings together four Pritzker Prize laureates, Álvaro Siza, Eduardo Souto Moura, Rafael Moneo and Tadao Ando, each translating their own philosophy of space into a wearable object.

Álvaro Siza, born in 1933 in Matosinhos, Porto, is among the most celebrated figures in contemporary architecture. His work has always sought to reinterpret the traditional through the lens of the present, finding poetry in precision. Speaking of his collaboration with Cauny, Siza described the process as a beautiful and stimulating exercise, a dialogue with Filipe Costa Almeida and with the long history of watch design itself. For him, the watch should look like a watch, just as a chair should look like a chair and an automobile should look like an automobile. The new need not be an aggression, he explains; innovation should reveal itself quietly, in balance with what endures.

Eduardo Souto Moura, born in Porto in 1952, shares Siza’s belief in essential forms and rigorous simplicity. His Cauny watch reflects his architectural ethos: clarity, functionality, and beauty coexisting without excess. “I like this watch because it’s simple, you can tell the time well, and it’s like a building,” he says. “It has to be simple and functional, and if possible beautiful, or, as Oscar Niemeyer said, it has to be beautiful, and if it works, even better.”

Designed with the sobriety that defines his work, Souto Moura’s model features a light gray dial with Roman numerals arranged in subtle irony, a polished and brushed steel case as thin as possible, and a German leather strap that fits with architectural precision. Subtlety, he reminds us, is the secret of elegance.

Tadao Ando, born in 1941 in Osaka, is Japan’s most renowned architect, known for his mastery of concrete, his dialogue with light, and his austere, meditative spaces. A self-taught architect and former boxer, Ando learned by traveling the world to study architectural sites, long before fame and awards followed. His watch for Cauny is inspired by the green apple, his personal symbol of youth and vitality. In his own words, “This watch reflects the spirit of the green apple – unripe, a little sour, yet full of promise.” He recalls Samuel Ullman’s poem Youth, which teaches that youth is not a time of life but a state of mind, the courage to face difficulty, and the resilience to keep dreaming. Ando’s design embodies this idea through form, material, and light: a curved sapphire crystal, brushed steel recalling concrete, and a green tone that evokes hope. For Ando, youth is not a memory but a movement of the heart.

In the words of Ullman, “Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.” That conviction resonates through the Architects of Time collection. Each of these watches, though small in scale, carries within it an architect’s lifelong conversation with time, its passing, its permanence, and its poetry. As Eduardo Souto Moura once wrote, “The ultimate objective of the work is to become anonymous and perennial in relation to time; in other words, to become poetry.”

more. www.cauny.com

Image Courtesy of Cauny

Image Courtesy of Cauny