The Bite Magazine - Spring 2019 - Issue 24

The Bite Magazine was invited to a tour of NOMOS Glashütte in Berlin- Kruezberg and Glashütte in Germany. Nomos bite watches NOMOS Glashütte F or watch enthusiasts, a visit to Nomos Glashütte in Germany will present you with a very ed- ucated tour into how they create their iconic timepieces and movements. Their in-house design studio Berliner- blau GmbH located in Berlin-Kreuz- berg, a two hour and ten-minute drive north of Glashütte, is where all the creative work that isn’t directly relat- ed to constructing watches takes place. You’ll also discover that the district of Kreuzberg is renowned for third wave coffee shops, galleries and independ- ent stores for the modern revolution- ist. Whilst Glashütte and Kreuzberg may seem worlds apart, at NOMOS there is no difference and they work very well in harmony. The combination of 170 years of watchmaking tradition and modern design has led to nearly 140 awards for design, branding and quality. The good news is that the staff at NOMOS in Berlin is connected by their creativity and love of good de- sign, as well as the mechanical watches that they make. So, you could imagine the great working relationships that take place at this watch company. Interestedly, the design studio is lo- cated in a former industrial loft from the early 1900s, with ceiling-high win- dows, which on sunny days flood the whitewashed walls with light. Having long replaced the button-making ma- chinery it once held with desks, meet- ing rooms and bookshelves, it still has an air of industrious activity. As you look around the open plan office, you will see features like a mosaic of multi- coloured Tetras covering a wall next to the entrance and hanging lights in the form of giant paper clouds designed by Frank O. Gehry. At the design studio, we learned how they design the timepieces in a pres- entation given by Thomas Höhnel, Berlinerblau’s senior product design- er. The creative force behind NOMOS’ sports model Ahoi, Höhnel is a gradu- ate of University of the Arts in Berlin and Central Saint Martins in London and also works on the brand’s straps, buckles, tools and packaging. “Like an architect who’s always working to scale and only sees his design when it’s com- plete, here it’s the same thing [but] in the other direction – you always draw and think in large dimensions, but the watch will turn out to be relatively small.” The whole process of designing and creating the watch often take years, usually five, before it is ready to be worn on the wrist. Firstly, the designs are drawn up on a computer monitor or sometimes using the old-fashioned way of a sketchbook. When the gener- al aesthetic has been agreed upon, the prototypes are built, first from plas- tic, then from brass, and finally from steel. Throughout the process, there are lots of conversations between the experts in Glashütte and the design staff in Berlin. Everything depends on the tiniest of details, even fractions of millimetres. The NOMOS headquarters is housed in a former train station in Glashütte, a small town tucked away between for- ests and hills, south of Berlin and near Dresden. It is located in the eastern Ore Mountains, where the timepieces made here are world famous and the