Ressence and Marc Newson team up for a watch like nothing else

Marc Newson has never been short on iconic objects, but his latest project sees him circling back to one of the ideas that made his name. The Australian designer has teamed up with Belgian watchmaker Ressence for the Type 3 MN, a limited-edition piece that fuses Newson’s signature, ultra-clean industrial design with the brand’s famously futuristic, oil-filled mechanics.

It’s a meeting of minds that feels strangely inevitable. Newson has followed Ressence since its earliest days and saw something familiar in founder Benoît Mintiens’ mission to tear wristwatches down to their functional core. “It’s not easy in the watch world to create something truly new,” Newson says. “But Benoît did.”

Ressence’s whole philosophy hinges on simplifying the act of telling time, stripping away hands, crowns and anything unnecessary. The result is the ROCS system: a set of orbiting discs that glide beneath an oil-filled upper chamber, giving the dial a flat, digital-like clarity.

Newson, who once explored similar territories with the cult Ikepod brand, immediately saw an opportunity to push that logic even further.

The Type 3 MN is the payoff. A 45mm Grade 5 titanium pebble with no lugs, no crown and no hard edges, the case drops straight into the strap in a way anyone familiar with Newson’s Megapode will spot instantly. It weighs just 95 grams, but feels like a design object first, a watch second, a single continuous shape rather than a case with attachments.

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Under the glass, the ROCS 3.6 module does its trademark sorcery: hours, minutes, seconds, day, date and even oil temperature spin on four eccentric satellites, always upright, always readable. Because the upper chamber is filled with 4.15mL of silicone oil, the display sits flush against the double-domed sapphire, eliminating reflection entirely. It’s a kinetic sculpture disguised as a dial.

Newson’s palette, celadon green, greys, black and tight bursts of yellow, pulls from decades of his own work, including his 1998 Hemipode design. Mintiens calls it “evolution theory,” suggesting that if Ikepod had kept going, this is where it might have landed. The pair obsessed over refining every surface, every index, every rotation. According to Newson, the project was “a geeky watch thing” in the best possible way.

Power comes from a modified ETA 2824 movement sealed in its own chamber, communicating magnetically with the display above. No mechanical linkage, no compromise, just a bellows system quietly compensating for oil expansion and the caseback acting as the winding and setting interface.

Collaboration watches are everywhere now, but few feel as symbiotic as this. The Type 3 MN isn’t a mash-up or a branding exercise; it’s the point where two strands of modern industrial design finally converge.

The result is a watch that looks like it shouldn’t be possible, and a reminder that both designers are at their best when they’re rethinking the rules rather than following them.

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