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Lange opens new Technology and Development Center
press release:
Glash?tte, 22 October 2003
Lange celebrates opening of a Technology and Development Centre
New manufacturing building will assure the continued qualitative advance of the company
With the official opening of the new company building by Georg Milbradt, Prime Minister of the State of Saxony, on 22 October 2003, a new and exciting chapter in watchmaking history is beginning for the traditional Saxon manufacturer Lange. The new Technology and Development Centre with its modernistic steel and glass construction is already the fifth building, but the first new building project for this German firm that was re-established in 1990.
It forms a physical and architectural link between the traditional and the modern. In future, watchmakers from the Lange I building, the former workshop of pendulum clock manufacturer Strasser & Rohde, which was the first company building to be restored in 1993, will be able to access the new extension through a glass bridge section. With its completion, the proverbially short pathways at Lange will become even shorter with the accommodation of many of the development sections, e.g. Movement Design, Prototype Building and Technology, under one roof. This new 1500 square metre building is designed to house a total of 80 personnel and to contribute to the qualitative advancement of the company, particularly in the creative and innovative watchmaking areas.
The Technology and Development Centre blends harmoniously with the existing complex of buildings, and with the Lange II production facility (opened in 1997 in the former Archimedes calculating machine factory), and also with the Lange Watchmaking School (opened in 1998). The historic family domain, which was reopened in 2001, is within sight in nearby Ferdinand Adolph Lange square.
The new 11-metre high building was realised by the architects Hofer & Kick of Schaffhausen and by Project Manager Olaf Meinel of Frankfurt, who have overseen all previous Lange construction projects. Site management was in the hands of B?ro Ritz from Dresden. The firm of MBM Metallbau ? also from Dresden ? was responsible for erecting this exceptional modular glass structure. With the involvement of 32 companies it took a total of 13 months to complete the project ? from excavating the 8-metre deep foundations, building the shell and creating the 760 square metres of glass frontage, through to laying the more than 23 kilometres of data cables and planting the green roof. A total of EUR 10 million has been invested in this project ? and this at a time when the general economy, including the luxury sector, has been going through difficult times.
With this new building Lange is also taking a technological step forward. It has taken 10 years of preparation to fulfil the dream of Lange founder Walter Lange, now a member of the Supervisory Board of Lange Uhren GmbH, and of G?nter Bl?mlein who sadly died in 2001 before completion of the project. It was in 1993, one year before the world premiere of the new ?A. Lange & S?hne? watch collection, that these two visionaries first had the idea for the in-house manufacturing of balance springs, the heart of all mechanical watches. In line with the company's policy of increasing the in-house production, Lange specialists worked intensively on the theoretical principles and technological processes of spring production. All production processes for the springs used in the different Lange mechanisms can now be performed in the Lange workshops to the highest of standards ? from drawing the wire to diameters as thin as 0.05 mm through to rolling, winding, annealing and bending. However, in-house production can only cover a percentage of Lange's requirements so the company's close relationship will continue in future with the Swiss spring manufacturer Nivarox who offers competitive prices and a good service.
With its in-house production of balance springs the Lange company has come full circle. Richard Lange, the son of company founder Ferdinand Adolph Lange, applied as early as 1930 for a patent for ?metal alloy watch springs? (Patent No. 529945 of 19 February 1930). He had recognised that the use of an admixture of beryllium in nickel alloys could remedy the major disadvantages of the then standard Elinvar springs, i.e. insufficient elasticity and unsatisfactory hardness. Although Richard Lange died two years after the patent was issued and so could not personally carry through the technical realisation of his patent, he had laid the decisive basis for the combination of materials that is still standardly used in the industry. With the - quite provocative - words of a watch expert ?it remains beyond dispute that in each Swiss watch with a Nivarox balance-spring, which is still used by all high-grade mechanical movements, beats a little bit of ?Lange?? (Reinhard Meis: A. Lange & S?hne ? The Watchmakers of Dresden, Antiquorum Editions Geneva, 1999, p. 194).
It is not only in the past that the ingenious mind of the Saxons has influenced Lange's development. Original ideas in watchmaking, ambitious inventions for the movements, constant progress in the level and standard of production, as well as technological variety: these aspects continue to be of decisive significance for the future growth of the company.
