A bespoke virtual architecture for IWC Schaffhausen unveiled at Watches & Wonders Geneva 2022 — a digital twin of the brand's shipping container booth reimagined as an immersive metaverse environment with distinct landscape worlds representing IWC's colored ceramic collections.
Asymptote’s design for the IWC Schaffhausen metaverse was unveiled by CEO Christoph Grainger-Herr during his keynote at Watches & Wonders Geneva 2022, marking the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s entry into Web3. The virtual environment translates the brand’s physical shipping container exhibition booth into an immersive digital architecture hosted on the Spatial.io platform — accessible via desktop, mobile, and VR headset.
Virtual Booth
The central architecture is a bespoke digital interpretation of IWC’s signature high-tech container booth. Inside, visitors navigate a sequence of black-panelled galleries with illuminated display vitrines showcasing the brand’s collections. The spatial design maintains the material precision and monolithic character of IWC’s physical exhibitions while exploiting the virtual medium to create perspectives and scales impossible in conventional exhibition design.
Landscape Worlds
Beyond the booth, the metaverse expands into a series of distinct landscape environments — each representing one of IWC’s new colored ceramic Pilot’s Watch editions. Visitors travel through portals into worlds inspired by the Mojave Desert, Woodland, and Lake Tahoe — immersive terrain environments where the container booth sits within vast, atmospheric landscapes that evoke the character and palette of each ceramic material.
Diamond Hand Club
The metaverse serves as the spatial home for the IWC Diamond Hand Club — the luxury industry’s first NFT-based membership program. Each client purchasing a colored ceramic Pilot’s Watch receives an NFT containing a raw diamond-shaped digital artwork, granting access to the virtual environment and exclusive experiences that bridge physical and digital worlds. Developed in collaboration with Web3 platform Arianee, the program positions the metaverse as a gateway to IWC’s evolving digital ecosystem.
Design Team
The project was designed by Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture with a team including Yifan Deng, Monika Kalinowska, and Dennis Karandiuk — continuing Asymptote’s legacy of virtual architecture from the NYSE Virtual Trading Floor through the Guggenheim Virtual Museum and into the contemporary metaverse.
