Hublot Just Dropped a Big Bang Tourbillon Carbon by Samuel Ross
The superstar designer, conceptual artist—let’s just say polymath—Samuel Ross, just released a new Hublot Big Bang Tourbillon Carbon. This stunning watch was conceived around high concepts about how design and art must serve social functions, which Ross told us about in a conversation just this afternoon. The watch measure 44 mm, is made from blasted titanium and features a honeycomb skeletonization of the case that reduces the weight by 50 percent, Ross told Robb Report. There will be only 50 produced, and the price is $143,000.
You’re a conceptual artist. Talk to me about the concepts behind this watch and how it ties to your broader work.
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The crux of it is that there’s this interest I have, which means function and expression, right? And if I really whittle it down, this is the correct format for me to be able to express that, considering my background in sculpture, architecture and fashion. You could convey a sense of meaning and quality from material, but you can also explore aesthetics and emotion through that. So there’s been this tension of pulling from the proprietary technology, those unique materials, what they do with carbon fiber and titanium, and proposing really visually rich and enticing solutions and expressions. It’s function, but it’s also so emotional. And it has to be emotional.
You say there’s a strong social aspect to what you do and a civil aspect that the art should serve. Talk to me about how this watch might do that, or how something that belongs to an individual can work in a social setting.
It’s interesting you know, I had this conversation last night at dinner about the potency of watchmaking, almost as a feat of engineering, right? [About] the virtues of where we are as a society, through technology, and through making, and through craft, and it shows us this limitless, endless future that we’re moving into filled by technology. When you’re able to pair expression with that, you almost enter a similar feeling of seeing a Henry Moore sculpture, right? It’s this revelation of expression and material, which is a celebration of who we are as a people. But here we’re playing on a smaller scale, but it’s the same conversation and the same revelation that you have when you hear the word tourbillon, and you see the carbon fiber, and you see the color. It’s that sense of magic and alchemy that comes together. So sculpture and watch making—funny enough, I think there is a link between the two. They’re both representing the best feats of expression and technology.
Humans at their best.
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree.
Thinking about those ideas that we just discussed, tell me about the particulars of this watch and how you came to conceive of it.
You know, it’s interesting because we first opened this concept and this idea of like a lean, sporting, athletic tourbillon in 2021. And I was really keen to offer a sense of stability to the portfolio that Hublot has kind of established. I wanted to produce a new shape and a new form, which was about material, about their mechanisms and movements at the highest end of their market. But year on year, from day one, it was very clear I wanted to have a sense of structure to allow iterative changes come about. So for the first season, of course, it was colorful, bold, surging through the city, very industrialized. For the first we had to capture the eye. The second we reduced the [materials] and the rubbers and the plastics down and increased the grade of titanium in quality, the finish, and just added more metal to the watch itself. For the further iteration, it’s the first time we’ve actually placed a foreign material outside of titanium and rubber into the watch. and it’s all been this game of drip-feeding incremental changes that are polarizing enough to bring your eye to view the watch in a different light.
Even color, if you think about the first orange, flat, single round color, the second green and flat. Here we have four different octaves of blue that work with the luminous paint that we have on the dial. So you’re seeing me start to play more with the system and the architecture of the style that we’ve built here.
And the honeycomb. Talk to me about that. It lends to my eye a sense of structure to the watch, where you’re seeing through it, and you kind of get the sense of Buckminster Fuller, that kind of vibe.
It’s interesting because, you know, the honeycomb references this icing on the cake and the reality is, as you said, I needed to have a plane or some type of layer in the watch that gave a sense of wonderment to support the form and to support how the movement is viewed. Second to that, almost as importantly, I wanted to reduce the weight of the watch because we’re looking at a 44 mm case. I typically wear a 42, and I wanted to look at how to reduce the weight of the watch, make it more comfortable and easy to wear. So I decided to literally reduce that plate and its weight by 50%, by taking around five grams out of it. And then also reducing the amount of surface coverage on the band itself by also removing and perforating. So you do two things there. You make it lighter, and the experience is just beautiful. It’s a revelation, a joy.
And the third component is that you actually remove any form of sweat via the strap. [Make it] breathable.
Yeah, I don’t think people realize how heavy rubber can be.
This is the thing, like when you were doing sports in it, you know, when it starts to heat up, that was a problem I’ve experienced on one of my favorite watches, which is The [Rolex] Yachtmaster Oyster Flex rose-gold model, a favorite of mine with the matte black ceramic bezel. I know there’s a space to tell more stories with that type of dynamic material base. But also that doesn’t have perforation or breathability. This does. So the nerd in me is still finding solutions that are beautiful to admire and live with.
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