There was a time when everyone knew what an office was.
An office was a place of work. A place of production. A place where people arrived in the morning, completed their tasks and left again in the evening. The office was a machine. And people were part of its engine.
Today, things are different. Machines increasingly work on their own. Algorithms write texts, create images, analyse data and make decisions. The question we face is no longer: How can we become more productive? It is: What do we do with the time that is created as a result? Perhaps that is the most fascinating question of our age.
Basel Social Club 2026 explores exactly this question. This year’s theme is Office. Not as a place of work, but as a place of possibility. A space for new ideas, new perspectives and new ways of being together. The office is not being optimised here. It is being questioned. That is precisely why we feel at home.
Because for many years, Maurice de Mauriac has been occupied with a question that often goes unnoticed: What is time, really?
We live in a culture of acceleration. Everything is expected to become faster. More efficient. More productive. Even time itself is often treated as a resource that can be saved, gained or lost. But time cannot be saved. No one has ever put five minutes aside for later. Time is not an account. It is an experience.
Perhaps that is why mechanical watches continue to fascinate us. They remind us that time is not created digitally. It is created through movement. Through energy. Through the interaction of countless small components. Through rhythm.
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During Basel Social Club, one of our watchmakers will make exactly this visible. In front of visitors, he will assemble watches by hand. Gear by gear. Spring by spring. Minute by minute. Those who stop and watch experience something rare. They begin to understand that time does not simply pass. It is made. It is created. And sometimes, in the process, a new perspective on the day itself emerges.
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That is precisely why we created the Basel-Date. A watch that does more than tell the time. Every day, it tells its wearer the day of the week in Basel dialect. The date appears beneath a magnifying lens, as if gently encouraging its owner to look a little closer. Not at tomorrow. Not at next week. At today.
Because perhaps that is the true purpose of timepieces in a world full of distractions: not to remind us what time it is, but to remind us that this moment matters.
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The cases of our automatic watches are 11 mm high and have a crown. The crown is easy to grip and turn precisely, so that setting the watch is possible with great ease.
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A blue anti-reflective sapphire crystal reveals the pulsating caliber. One has the feeling of being able to see and feel the soul of the mechanical automatic movement "The watch is alive".
Basel Social Club explores the future of the office. We explore the future of time. In the end, these may simply be two sides of the same question. If machines increasingly take over the work, what do we do with the hours that remain?
Our answer is simple: We give them our attention.
