Makina Andras I Watch by Danilo Villanueva is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 Silver A' Design Award in Watch Design Competition Category.
SilverWatch· 2024
Makina Andras I Watch
Client: Makina Watches
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Watch Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #154989The Design
About Makina Andras I Watch
Makina Watches wanted to design a black sheep in the rectangular watch category that's already full of art deco inspired dress watches. That's why Andras I was born as a sports watch with a bolder and more modern approach. Coated in stealth black, its stainless steel case is composed of slopes and angular shapes that make up its multifaceted design. Its octagonal case is designed to taper around a larger movement for less volume and increased wearability. Its dial is multi-layered and 3 dimensional and its strap is muscular and shapely to look more imposing from every angle.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Makina Andras I Watch is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Makina Andras I Watch is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Makina Andras I Watch is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Premium Filipino Luxury Timepieces
We craft exceptional watches with original designs from case to crown, combining Swiss movements with bold Filipino artistry. Our award-winning timepieces feature sculpted steel cases, sapphire crystals, and innovative geometries that stand out in any collection.
Explore CollectionInterviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
To push the three-handed rectangular watch category with the limited production and budgetary resources available to us.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
We wanted to design the black sheep in the three-handed rectangular watch category.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
To keep this design as a one off. It will be sold out in one month or so. After that, Andras will very much likely return but not exactly the same way as its original iteration.
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to the octagonal case design of the Makina Andras I Watch challenges traditional rectangular watch aesthetics - could you elaborate on how origami principles influenced this unconventional design choice?
We were looking at ways of creating a distinct look for our first rectangular mechanical watch. Although iconic and beautiful, most famous rectangular watches out there are simplistic and flat in nature. We wanted ours to be more multifaceted in architecture. Origami's folds and triangulated shapes helped us decide where to put lines and facets on our case design to really achieve a more 3-dimensional form when observed from all angles.
The Makina Andras I Watch features a distinctive multifaceted surface with crisp lines and geometric shapes - what inspired you to move away from the prevalent art deco style in rectangular watches and embrace this bold, modern direction?
Makina as a watch brand does not release watch models that are homages or purely based on traditional watches. Makina creates models that aim to be a lot more on the modern side of things pushing what already exists in the industry as much as possible within very limited resources. And so a lot of thinking is involved before we even put pen to paper to be able to get something we can green light our workshop to prototype.
The dimensional complexity of the Makina Andras I Watch dial creates an engaging visual experience - how did you balance the technical challenges of achieving this layered, three-dimensional effect while maintaining practical functionality?
The octagonal design solution for the case helps in being able to house a larger movement and keep Andras I to wearable dimensions. If it were less octagonal in nature, it would make Andras_I look too large and bulky. Although invisible on the outside, the interior makings of the case is unconventional in nature because of an additional step layer that serves to hold Andras I's top dial layer. Without this, The dial wouldn't have as much depth as it currently has now.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The idea was to design a black sheep in the rectangular watch category full of art deco inspired dress watches. That's why our first rectangular watch is as a sports watch designed to be bolder, more modern and striking from every angle. Coated in stealth black, its 316L stainless steel case is composed of angular shapes that make up its multifaceted design. Its dial is 3 dimensional with a sand blasted finish. Its strap is muscular and shapely, echoing its chiseled case and layered dial.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Its octagonal shape is purposefully designed to taper around a larger circular movement lowering its overall volume and keeping the case size down to wearable dimensions at 33mm wide, 44mm lug to lug, and only 10.5mm thick. The strap is made of silicone rubber and has air pockets on the backside providing higher comfort when worn during intense sports activities and warmer conditions measuring at 22mm (lugs) tapering to 20mm (buckle). The movement is Sellita SW260 with a 38 hr power reserve.
- Tags
- Makina watches, filipino watch brand, timepiece, microbrand, rectangular watch, Philippines watch brand,
- Production Technology
- It has a PVD coated surgical grade 316L stainless steel case sculpted by CNC machinery with hand-polished and-hand brushed textures for a more robust and premium finish. The dial is layered, made of brass with a sand blasted finish and is hand-assembled. The scratch resistant sapphire crystal glass is coated with 3x Anti-reflective coating. It’s powered by a movement found in many luxury timepieces, SW 260, marrying thoughtful design and premium components at an affordable price of USD 725.
- Design Challenge
- Customers have been asking for size variety and models with smaller dimensions. We kept this in mind when designing Andras I. The challenge was designing a rectangular watch around only a few reputable movements that were available in the market and that we’re willing to use. This is why we gave the case an octagonal shape so that it could taper around a fairly large 25.6mm movement, giving it less volume, less surface area and a thickness of only 10.5mm for higher wearability.
- Research
- As with all our models, we needed to make sure that our case design for Andras I will bring something new to the industry. Our origami inspired case was the clear winner after several design explorations. We looked at both traditional and abstract forms of the art and explored origami inspired architecture to see how we can incorporate our findings into Andras I in a way that is minimal, modern, and will not alienate watch purists who are often conventional and very difficult to please.
- Inspiration
- Since most watches in the rectangular watch category are flat art deco inspired watches, we wanted to create a watch that is more modern and photogenic from all angles. Hence, one of our sources for inspiration when designing Andras I was origami. We fell in love with the art’s crisp lines and the geometric shapes that form 3 dimensional, multifaceted surfaces. While the case’s robustness comes from its solid, quality materials and finish, its elegant design is originally born from origami. The results were favorable to the brand with Andras I's design gaining international recognition from news, watch expert and design publications like Designboom, Time and Tide Watches, Watchpro, Oracle Time, and The Manila Times just to name a few.
- Project Duration
- Andras I took one year to complete from conceptualization in September 2022. A prototype that we were happy with was marketed for pre-orders in May 2023. And the production model was released in September 2023.
- Operation Flow
- Andras I was meant to be simple in functionality (hours, minutes and seconds only) because our intent was to give the three-handed rectangular segment something different. The minutes and seconds markers are crisp and painted white and the hands are painted blue, all of which are decisions that contribute to high legibility under all lighting environments. The crown is consistent with crowns in our other models and is ownable to the brand; it is simple and yet it has grip and is easy to use.
- Team Members
- Creative Director: Danilo Villanueva
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer, Danilo Villanueva, Andras_I, 2023.
Image #2: Photographer, Danilo Villanueva, Andras_I, 2023.
Image #3: Photographer, Danilo Villanueva, Andras_I, 2023.
Image #4: Photographer, Danilo Villanueva, Andras_I, 2023.
Image #5: Photographer, Danilo Villanueva, Andras_I, 2023.
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