IWC, Schaffhausen, CH

Transparent manufacturing center for luxury watches

ATP Zurich designed an elegant and transparent manufacturing center for luxury watches for IWC. In formal terms, the seemingly filigree production building recalls the pavilion-like structures of the Modern Movement. Radiating a sense of quality, IWC’s corporate design has been playfully integrated into the architectural language. 

Completed in 2018, the new IWC production facility brings together the manufacture of components, movements and cases in a single location. Thanks to a process of permanent exchange with the client and an intense engagement with the core process of the building ATP Zurich was able to meet the high constructional and technical requirements of the manufacturing center and to optimally coordinate its processes in line with the criteria of lean & quality manufacturing. After operating for six months the center is proving to be highly efficient and has more than met the expectations of the clients and its satisfied users. The building complex, integrally designed by ATP Zurich and realized ‘on time and to cost’ is highly flexible in order to ensure that production can constantly be adapted to the needs of the market.

Corporate Design
Lean and elegant, the IWC Manufacturing Center slips effortlessly, a free-standing building with a powerful presence, into the rolling landscape near Schaffhausen am Rhein. In formal terms it recalls the pavilion-like buildings of the Modern Movement and is particularly observant of the premium corporate design of the luxury watch brand IWC. Just as IWC brings together craftsmanship and technical innovation to create premium quality watches, the new manufacturing center can also be seen as a combination of the craft of building and state-of-the-art technology.

Visitors enter the elegant world of IWC as soon as they step over the threshold of the building. Having climbed an imposing, wide concrete stair below a filigree canopy with a cantilever of nine meters they enter the elegant entrance hall, where an over-dimensional precision movement behind the reception desk displays the time in the form of a “perpetual calendar”. The colors black and white dominate and contrast within the interior spaces. Light-gray floors, black-finished concrete and timber walls with a fine grain and a subtle touch of red enhance the elegant range of materials.

Given the client’s requirement that no building technology – such as ventilation ducting – should be visible from the outside, the building has nothing of the air of a normal factory. And this resolute design approach continues within the building. For example, ATP found a uniform optical solution for all media connections by designing special, flexibly positionable media columns.

Production / showroom
The client placed great emphasis on the sustainable and economic organization of the building. Up to 450 employees will be able to work in future in the manufacturing halls. The production areas, which are available for the positioning of both furniture and machinery, can be used flexibly due to the continuous structural grid. All spaces are also designed for the introduction and exchange of large items of building plant so that equipment can be later added or upgraded without extra constructional cost.

The complex that was designed in the form of a digital twin in the studios of ATP Zurich with the help of Building Information Modeling (BIM) can now be experienced at first hand by visitors to the Manufacturing Center. Just like a transparent factory the IWC Manufacturing Facility enables visitors to experience the entire process of creating a luxury watch as if they were in a showroom.

