Valley Of Treasures

Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet and Hotel des Horlogers are two new landmark attractions for Switzerland’s Vallee de Joux.

- Wei-Yu Wang

MUSÉE ATELIER AUDEMARS PIGUET was completed and open to the public in 2020, but COVID restrictions meant that it was only truly accessible this year. As a result, it was booked solid throughout the summer. Tours are by appointment only, up to three months in advance, and numbers are kept low to allow the manufacture’s hospitality team to ensure a fuss-free, comfortable experience.

Located in Le Brassus, a village in Vallee de Joux, its architecture is itself a highlight. A project designed by Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG) and implemented by Swiss architecture office CCHE, the museum peeks out of the hillside as a grass-topped spiral of glass and warm lighting. It connects to the manufacture’s oldest building, where Jules Louis Audemar and Edward Auguste Piguet set up their workshop in 1875. Yet despite its unarguable modernity, the new structure’s single-story, organic form seems right at home next to an 18th-century historical building. Featured in multiple architecture publications and picking up a handful of awards, the museum has attracted more than a few visitors with little-to-no interest in watchmaking – arriving instead to admire aspects such as the load-bearing floor-to-ceiling laminated glass panels, modernist wood-panelled interior or temperature-regulating brass mesh cladding.