Almost 200 metres long and 67 metres wide, ten floors of which four are underground, 600 parking spaces, an auditorium for 299 spectators and even a restaurant seating 880 people. Those are impressive numbers for the new Patek Philippe centre in Plan-les-Ouates, just outside Geneva. The objectives were just as important: when launching the project, Thierry Stern, the company's president, set himself the goal of responding to the company's growing need for space and providing it with an effective production tool with which to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
In addition to its grandeur, the building, resembling a large ship with essential volumes, stands out for its contemporary style made up of large glass surfaces, white polished concrete walkways along all the façades and bronze-coloured safety stairs reminiscent of those in New York buildings. Not forgetting the architectural solutions that recall the style of the company's watches, such as the slight horizontal curvature of the walkways that recall the octagonal, rounded design of the Nautilus case, or the staircase parapets whose shape cites the cut of the leaf-shaped hands.
The large, bright interior spaces bring together the various workshops where around 62,000 watches are produced each year. From the ground and first floors, dedicated to the manufacture and manual finishing of the movement components, to the second, where the machining, polishing and assembly of the case and bracelet elements and setting take place; from the third floor, with the research and development studios and a haute horlogerie laboratory, to the next two, with spaces for the high craftsmanship professions, for training watchmakers and the sales network, an auditorium, a large restaurant and several salons. Spaces that, although the number of watches will remain limited, have also been designed to respond to the complexity of production.
