This Carbon Fibre Square Tourbillon Just Reinvented The Wheel

• Hublot was an outsider in the ’90s, dismissed by traditionalists for pairing gold with rubber, but it would later flip the industry on its head.
• The Square Bang Tourbillon 4-Day Power Reserve challenges everything we know about watchmaking, from round movements to circular traditions.
• With a fully square carbon case and matching movement architecture, Hublot has replaced the wheel.

In a world of round watches, Hublot has always taken pride in being the brand that refuses to play ball.

While the Swiss watch industry clung to heritage, Latin mottoes, and rose gold moonphase calendars, Hublot burst onto the scene in the ’80s with a rubber strap and a gold case, like a DJ crashing an opera with his trusty USB.

A Swiss luxury brand, whose own history is younger than most of the CEOs running Switzerland’s oldest maisons, Hublot watches are everywhere: on the wrists of world champions, fashion powerhouses, rap royalty, and hardcore collectors.

Where other Maisons leaned on heritage, Hublot doubled down on rebellion, integrating ceramic in radioactive colourways. Traditionalists weren’t entirely ecstatic at this new world order, instead drawn to pedigree, complications, and precious metal dress watches. But Hublot’s reputation eventually changed in 2004 with the launch a chronograph called the Big Bang, in ceramic, and priced it above a Rolex.

Traditionally, watches are round because the components inside are round. Barrels, gear trains and tourbillons are all based on wheels turning in a circle. Even the world’s most iconic square watches like the Cartier Tank and Santos rely on circular mechanics beneath the dial.

Hublot’s new Square Bang Tourbillon 4-Day Power Reserve is built to break that expectation. Housed in a 42mm x 42mm case crafted entirely from 3D carbon fibre composite, this is the first Square Bang with a tourbillon, and the first with only two central hands. But more importantly, it’s the first to take the square shape seriously, reworking the movement itself.

Powering the watch is Hublot’s in-house MHUB6023, a manual-winding tourbillon movement developed specifically for this piece. It boasts a 96-hour power reserve, with the barrel placed at 12 o’clock and the tourbillon at the 6; a perfectly symmetrical layout mirrored by the power reserve indicator at 9 and winding mechanism at 3.

The entire calibre is skeletonised, suspended between square and rectangular bridges, with no traditional round architecture in sight.

Of course, there’s a reason most watchmakers don’t attempt this kind of geometry: Square cases are notoriously difficult to waterproof, balance, and design without looking clunky.

Yet Hublot has somehow delivered a piece that’s not just technically impressive, but surprisingly wearable. The carbon fibre construct makes this piece ridiculously light on the wrist, and rated to 30 metres of water resistance despite its openworked complexity. But I wouldn’t recommend this one for the surf.

Though, for me, Hublot’s biggest achievement isn’t listed in the spec sheet; it’s in this Swiss luxury watch brand’s insistence on doing things differently; daring to turn away from the well-trodden path in search of something that didn’t exist yesterday. The Art of Fusion. A refusal to follow convention.

Just like Hublot popularised ceramic in the early noughties, made rubber a respectable option for luxury timepieces, and gave us coloured sapphire cases with six-figure price tags, this Chief Disruptor has delivered a tourbillon that looks like it was sketched with a ruler. With the Square Bang Tourbillon, Hublot has once again reinvented the wheel, and replaced it with a carbon fibre square.