Christoph Behling is a product designer and the founder of Christoph Behling Design, a London-based product design studio established in 2004. Behling is also the founding director of SolarLab Research & Design, a solar-powered transport and architecture company.
Behling was born in 1970 in Geneva, Switzerland and raised in Germany. [1] He completed a diploma in Industrial Design in 1995 at the Art Academy in Stuttgart. [2]
Behling started his career with design practices in Tokyo and London. In 2004, he founded both Christoph Behling Design and SolarLab Research & Design. He was a teacher of the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art from 2005 to 2009 and is the curator of the annual Sustain Exhibition at the RCA. [3]
In 2006, Behling launched Serpentine SolarShuttle, a solar-powered boat that can feed unused electricity back into the national grid. The boat won several design awards. [4] [1]
Behling has also worked as a product designer for companies communication technology, fashion, luxury goods, watches, water sanitation and transport. He has been the lead designer for TAG Heuer since 2004. [5] [6]
Since 2007, Behling has also worked as the creative director of the Atelier Group, a Paris-based mobile telecommunications communications company. He has collaborated with Geberit, a European sanitary manufacturer, to reduce water consumption in homes.[ citation needed ]
Product Design
SolarLab Research + Design
TAG Heuer S.A. is a Swiss luxury watchmaker that designs, manufactures and markets watches and fashion accessories, as well as eyewear and mobile phones manufactured under license by other companies and carrying the TAG Heuer brand name.
Piaget SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker and jeweller. Founded in 1874 by Georges Piaget in the village of La Côte-aux-Fées, Piaget is currently a subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont group.
Zenith SA is a Swiss luxury watchmaker. The company was started in 1865 by Georges Favre-Jacot in Le Locle in the canton of Neuchâtel and is one of the oldest continuously operating watchmakers. Favre-Jacot invented the concept of "in house movements", believing that only through control of the entire watchmaking process could the highest quality be achieved. Zenith was purchased by LVMH in November 1999, becoming one of several brands in its watch and jewellery division, which includes TAG Heuer and Hublot. Julien Tornare is president and CEO.
In horology, a complication is any feature of a timepiece beyond the display of hours, minutes and seconds. A timepiece indicating only hours, minutes and seconds is known as a simple movement. Common complications include date or day-of-the-week indicators, alarms, chronographs (stopwatches), and automatic winding mechanisms. Complications may be found in any clock, but they are most notable in mechanical watches where the small size makes them difficult to design and assemble. A typical date-display chronograph may have up to 250 parts, while a particularly complex watch may have a thousand or more parts. Watches with several complications are referred to as grandes complications.
Audemars Piguet Holding SA is a Swiss manufacturer of luxury watches and clocks, headquartered in Le Brassus, Switzerland. The company was founded by Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet in the Vallée de Joux in 1875, acquiring the name Audemars Piguet & Cie in 1881. The company has been family-owned since its founding.
F. P. Journe, legally Montres Journe SA, is a Swiss-French high-end watch Manufacture d'horlogerie founded in 1999 by François-Paul Journe. The only three-time winner of the Aiguille d'Or grand prize from the Fondation du Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, Journe focuses on complex precision chronometers with a production of around 800 watches per year. 20% of the company was acquired by Chanel in 2018 for an undisclosed amount.
Greubel Forsey is a Swiss watchmaking company specializing in complicated, high-end timepieces. It was launched in 2004 by Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey and is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.
Gallet (ˈgæl.eɪ) is a historic Swiss manufacturer of high-end timepieces for professional, military, sports, racing, and aviation use. Gallet is the world's oldest clock making house with history dating back to Humbertus Gallet, a clock maker who became a citizen of Geneva in 1466. The Gallet & Cie name was officially registered by Julien Gallet (1806–1849) in 1826, who moved the family business from Geneva to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Prior to this date, operations commenced under the name of each of the Gallet family patriarchs.
Jean Lassale was a Swiss watch company that designed the Calibre 1200, featuring the thinnest mechanical watch movement: 1.2 mm. In the 1970s, Pierre Mathys, master watchmaker in La Chaux-de-Fonds, designed and built the prototype of a revolutionary watch caliber, with the goal of making the thinnest watch in the world. To achieve this feat, Mathys based his design on the work of Robert Annen, who previously had the idea of using ball bearings in small scale horology. Mathys decided to remove the bridges and counter-pivot, and instead use ball bearings for the axis.
The TAG Heuer Monaco is a series of automatic chronograph wristwatches originally introduced by Heuer in 1969 in honour of the Monaco Grand Prix. The Monaco was revolutionary for being the first automatic square cased chronograph. The Hollywood film star Steve McQueen used the watch to accessorize his character in the 1971 film Le Mans. In the decades after his death the use of film stills has made the watch synonymous with McQueen. Although it was discontinued in the mid-1970s, the Monaco was reissued with a new design in 1998 and was reintroduced again with an entirely new mechanisms in 2003 in response to McQueen's increasing popularity.
Ateliers deMonaco is a manufacture d'horlogerie of luxury wristwatches based in Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva.
Mathey-Tissot is a Swiss watch maker of prestige watches, originally established in 1886 by Edmond Mathey-Tissot at Les Ponts-de-Martel in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.
Jean-François Ruchonnet is a Swiss watchmaker, designer and creator in luxury sector.
HYT is a watchmaking company based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. It is the only watchmaking company to display time with fluids.
Pierre Koukjian is an artist based in Geneva, Switzerland. His life work focuses mainly on contemporary art and watch design. His work can be found at the Musée de l'Horlogerie in Geneva. His contemporary art ranges from oil on canvas to metal stainless steel sculptures and have been denoted as postmodernist by critics.
MB&F is a Swiss luxury watch and clock manufacturer founded by Maximilian Busser in July 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland. MB&F specializes in small series of concept-type watches. MB&F is also known for its futuristic clocks and collaborations with other artists and watchmakers.
Montres Tudor SA, or simply Tudor, is a Swiss watchmaker based in Geneva, Switzerland. Registered in 1926 by Hans Wilsdorf, founder of Rolex, the brand remains a sister company to Rolex; both companies are owned by the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation. Tudor was initially known for watches produced for the military and professional divers. From the 1960s to 1980s, several navies issued Tudor Submariners to their divers, including the US Navy SEALs and the French Marine Nationale.
LAURENT FERRIER is a Swiss watch manufacturer founded in 2009 and named after its founder, Laurent Ferrier. The company focuses on luxury watches with a production of around 300 watches in 2021. The company is headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland.