After decades of designing complications for other houses, Dominique Renaud put his own name on a watch in 2026: the Pulse60, which beats just once a second.
The watchmakers' watchmaker
In Swiss watchmaking Dominique Renaud is known as "l'horloger des horlogers". In 1986 he founded the Renaud Papi manufacture, later sold to Audemars Piguet, and over the years he has designed dozens of complications for some of the most respected names in the trade. For most of his career his work carried other people's logos.
Form follows function
His own brand starts from a simple rule borrowed from the architect Louis Sullivan: form always follows function. Each design pairs a clear, almost minimal shape with a mechanism that questions how time is kept and shown. He says much of it comes from nature and the mountains around him.
Pulse60: once a second
Most watches hurry. Their balance wheels beat three, four or five times a second, because a faster beat is easier to keep steady. The Pulse60 goes the other way: its balance swings once a second, 60 times a minute, the pace of a resting heart. Dominique Renaud calls it the lowest frequency in contemporary mechanical watchmaking.
To keep so slow a beat steady, the balance is 20 mm across, the scale of a marine chronometer's, and it sits on the dial side where you can watch it. The parts around it were rethought so it can swing past 360° without overbanking, about twice the usual amplitude.
The hand-wound BUA2024 movement runs for four days. Hours and minutes sit at 12 o'clock, the seconds at 9 o'clock move in half-second steps, and a torque indicator at 3 o'clock shows how much power is left. The case is grade 5 titanium, 40 mm by 44 mm.
At PRJKT8
The Pulse60 comes in titanium with a silver-grey dial, in titanium with pink gold, and in titanium with a black dial. PRJKT8 is the authorised Dominique Renaud retailer in Bahrain, at Moda Mall, Manama.
