A misspelt colloquium with a Germanic pronunciation, kollokium is not a brand. As pretentious and cliché as that sounds, it’s true. Instead, kollokium defines itself as a project-based platform. Its purpose: to explore accessible alternatives in watchmaking.

CREATION EX NIHILO

It’s been a long time coming. kollokium was founded in 2020 by three friends. Each went down a different path in the watchmaking industry, but they all found common ground in their shared aesthetic sensibilities. After having collectively spent a lifetime contributing to the creations (and creativity) of numerous Swiss and international watch brands, Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindi’s mutual desire to build something from scratch became too strong to ignore. To create with no established or inherited framework. No existing brand, no defined artistic direction, no rehashed history, no constraints. The freedom to truly, fully manifest objects they envision without the compromises of structure. kollokium seeks to materialize timepieces that transcend the confines of traditional watchmaking while remaining obviously mechanical watches. It aims to distill and incorporate all the things that fascinate and move us, from architecture and design to contemporary art and sub cultures. kollokium is watchmaking in a new context, from a new vantage point.

NEBRUTALIST HOROLOGY

A bit of post-war brutalism, some Kraftwerk synth-pop and a Philip K. Dick retro-futuristic backdrop. For kollokium projects, it’s not so much about defining a style, but about capturing and conveying a mood. Some elements might seem familiar, though likely not things you would have encountered in a timepiece. It may appear simple enough on a first glance, but the closer you look, the more details begin to jump out at you. The textures. The depth. The contrast. The interplay of light and dark; of industrial and fantastical.The emphasis on graphics. The controlled chaos. If traditional watchmaking is a classical opera, kollokium is a gritty sci-fi noir.