67 Plates. 9 Layers. 6 Hours by Hand.
5 min read
Kollokium is not a watch brand in any traditional sense. There is no heritage story. No founding watchmaker with decades at a Swiss atelier. No flagship boutique. What there is: three industry veterans who decided to build watches like no one else would.
Founded in 2020 by Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindi, Kollokium calls itself a project-based collective. They have released exactly two watch projects. Both sold out. Both looked like nothing else on the market. And both proved that a microbrand does not need volume to earn respect.
What makes them different
The dials.
Projekt 01 uses 468 individual steel pins, applied by hand, each tipped with Super-LumiNova. The effect resembles a pin-art board from the 1980s, but the execution is anything but playful. The pins create undulations across the dial surface that suggest hour markers through depth and shadow. In the dark, the lumed tips transform the entire face into a glowing topographic field.
Projekt 02 takes a different path. Instead of pins, the dial is built from 67 stacked plates arranged in 9 layers, forming a three-dimensional landscape. Each plate is hand-painted with lacquer infused with luminous material. The assembly of a single dial takes approximately 6 hours. If a plate bends during pressing, the entire dial is scrapped.
This is not efficiency. This is obsession.
The case for die-casting
Most watch cases are milled from a solid block of steel. Kollokium chose die-casting instead, a process more common in automotive and industrial manufacturing. Die-casting allows forms and textures that would be impossible or too expensive to achieve through traditional machining.
The result is a monobloc case with no separate bezel, no removable case back, and integrated triangular lugs. The surface carries the raw, slightly imperfect texture of the casting process. Kollokium does not polish it away. They call it brutalist artisanship. As a designer, I call it a deliberate decision to let the process speak.
The Projekt 02 case measures 39.5mm in diameter, just 5.9mm thick without the crystal. A tall box-shaped sapphire sits on top, pushing the total height to 12.4mm. That crystal creates the impression of a terrarium, enclosing the topographic dial like a specimen under glass.
What powers it
Inside sits a La Joux-Perret G101, a Swiss automatic movement with 68 hours of power reserve. Kollokium leaves it unbranded and hidden behind a solid case back. Their reasoning is honest: they did not make the movement, so they do not pretend it is theirs.
The movement is not the point. The dial is the point. The case is the point. The experience of looking at something you have never seen before on a wrist is the point. Kollokium knows exactly what they are and what they are not.
Why this matters
Projekt 02 Variant B is priced at CHF 3,666, limited to 299 pieces. It is not cheap. It is not trying to compete on value. What it offers is a perspective on watchmaking that treats the dial as architecture and the case as sculpture. In a market full of heritage homages and safe design, Kollokium is building objects.
If you have never heard of them, that is by design. They do not advertise. They do not chase influencers. They release watches, and the watches speak.
This is exactly why Scout exists.
Scout. Entry 001. Horo Log