Omega has been making watches at the same site, on Rue Jakob-Stampfli 96 in Bienne, Switzerland, since 1882, when it opened up shop as Louis Brandt & Fils. This year, the historic manufacture expands with an all-new production building, designed by award-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, which opened its doors officially this week.
Omega describes its new facility as “an eco-friendly masterpiece.”
The new building houses all steps of assembly, testing, quality control, and training under one roof, with five floors of space devoted to maximizing the efficiency of each process. Described as “cutting edge” and “an eco-friendly masterpiece” by Omega, the facility is built entirely of Swiss spruce wood and concrete and displays the blending of traditional Japanese architecture and western modernism that has made Shigeru Ban one of the world’s leading architects. Winner of the 2014 Pritzker Prize, the architectural world’s most prestigious award, Ban also designed, among many other iconic structures around the world, the Nicolas G. Hayek Center in Tokyo, the Japanese headquarters of Omega’s Swiss-based parent company, the Swatch Group. At the core of the building is a high-tech, fireproofed fully automated storage system for more than 30,000 boxes of watchmaking parts. This central stock system rises through three floors and uses robotic arms, visible through specially built windows, to distribute parts to the worker...