Altiplano Ultimate Concept

The Piaget Altiplano Ultimate Concept won the Aiguille d'Or at the 2020 GPHG and it did so by being 2mm thick. Two millimeters. The thinnest mechanical watch ever made. For context, the Breguet Classique 7147 is 6.1mm. The Patek Calatrava is approximately 8mm. A credit card is 0.76mm. The Altiplano Ultimate Concept is less than three credit cards stacked.

Piaget achieved this by eliminating the boundary between movement and case. In every other watch, the movement sits inside a case. The AUC uses the caseback itself as the mainplate of the movement. The case is the movement. The movement is the case. They are one integrated structure. The barrel, the gear train, the escapement, all are mounted directly to the caseback. The case band is cobalt alloy, chosen for rigidity at minimal thickness. The crystal is cemented rather than gasketed because a gasket would add thickness.

The tradeoff is fragility. At 2mm, the Altiplano Ultimate Concept cannot take an impact that a conventional watch would shrug off. Piaget acknowledges this. It is not a daily wear watch. It is a demonstration of what is possible when a manufacture decides to push a single parameter to its absolute limit. Piaget has been the ultra-thin house since the 1960s, when they produced the Caliber 9P at 2mm thick and the Caliber 12P automatic at 2.3mm. The AUC is the culmination of sixty years of thinness as a design philosophy.

I include this watch because it represents the opposite approach from the Lederer and the Gronefeld. Those watches add complexity. The Piaget removes everything. Both approaches require extraordinary engineering. The Lederer fits 210 parts into a case. The Piaget fits an entire watch into 2mm. Both are valid answers to the question of what mechanical watchmaking can achieve when constraint is the starting point.