MB&F HM12 THE GUARDIAN: THE WATCH THAT BECAME A BEING

Some watches tell the time, and some watches attempt something more elusive: to give mechanics a personality. MB&F has long occupied that second territory. Since its founding in 2005, Maximilian Büsser & Friends has treated watchmaking not as an exercise in miniaturised convention, but as a field for memory, sculpture, emotion, and mechanical theatre. The HM12 The Guardian may be one of the clearest expressions yet of that philosophy, because it refuses to remain just a wristwatch.

It is a head. It is a face. It is the brain of a robot. And, when returned to its companion body, it becomes part of a complete mechanical being.

Originally conceived around MB&F’s 20th anniversary, the HM12 'The Guardian' took longer than expected to develop. That delay feels appropriate. The project grew into something more ambitious than a commemorative object: a statement of intent for the brand’s third decade. It draws from the earliest Horological Machines, with their science-fiction charge and sculptural audacity; it also absorbs the refinement of the Legacy Machines and the collaborative imagination of MB&F’s Co-Creations. The result is not simply a new reference within the HM line; it is a condensation of the brand’s entire mythology.

Viewed from the front, the watch reads almost instinctively like the head of a robot. The time display becomes a pair of eyes: instantaneous jumping hours on the left, trailing minutes on the right, both read from a fixed point as their discs rotate beneath the surface. Below them, one side of the micro-rotor sits where a mouth might be, shaped in the familiar MB&F battle-axe form. Above, the flying tourbillon occupies the place of the brain, exposed under sapphire and lit from multiple angles.

This anthropomorphic reading is not an accidental flourish. It is the central idea from which everything else follows. For Maximilian Büsser, robots have never been mere machines. They belong to a childhood world of science fiction, toys, and imagined companions, where mechanical forms could be protectors, explorers, or friends. For Max Maertens, the product designer behind HM12, the references come from a later visual culture of animated robots, transformation, and adaptive intelligence. HM12 sits between those generations of imagination. It is nostalgic without being retro, futuristic without becoming sterile.

That balance is difficult to achieve. A lesser watch might have settled for novelty: a few robot-like cues applied to an otherwise conventional object. HM12 goes further because the entire architecture has been shaped by the narrative. The case, movement, indication, and companion robot all serve the same idea. This is where MB&F is at its strongest: not when it decorates watchmaking with fantasy, but when fantasy becomes the logic of the watchmaking itself.

The defining mechanical gesture of THE HM12 is its “face shield” system. On paper, it is a mechanism that opens and closes over the front of the watch. In practice, it changes the entire character of the object.

Actuated by the left-hand crown, the shields move continuously and linearly, allowing the wearer to decide how much of the watch’s face remains visible. The system may be stopped at any point, from fully open to concealed. Once the shields reach their limit, the crown declutches, disengaging from the mechanism. This is important because it makes the interaction feel deliberate rather than fragile. The wearer is not merely operating a gimmick; they are controlling a protective layer within the personality of the machine.

Mechanically, the shield system is independent of the timekeeping movement. More than 200 components are dedicated to this function alone—an extraordinary number for something that, in another context, might have been treated as a visual device. MB&F instead elevates it to the level of horological complication. The shields protect the robot’s face within the story of the watch, but they also provide a genuine kinetic transformation. They bring colour, concealment, exposure, and play into the act of wearing.

For all its science-fiction energy, the HM12 is not an abandonment of traditional watchmaking. In fact, one of the project’s more compelling qualities is the way it places classical finishing and high horology inside a deliberately futuristic form.

The movement was developed entirely in-house and comprises 646 components, with an 84-hour power reserve and 86 jewels. It features a flying tourbillon, instantaneous jumping hours, trailing minutes, and the automatic winding system with a double-sided micro-rotor. Much of the calibre is hand-finished, and the architecture has been shaped to follow the case rather than forcing the case to accommodate a pre-existing movement.

Turn the watch over, and the mood changes. The front is theatrical, protective, almost creature-like. The back is calmer and more traditionally horological. The bridges are softly curved, the mainplate is grained, and the rear rotor incorporates a guilloché dome execution that is synonymous with Kari Voutilainen and his team. That detail matters. Guillochage is already an exacting craft on a flat surface; applying it to a curved, spherical form introduces another level of difficulty. It is a reminder that the HM12 is not merely a design object with a movement inside it. Its fantasy is supported by craft.

This duality has long defined MB&F. The Horological Machines are often described by their visual audacity, while the Legacy Machines are associated with a more classical expression of horology. HM12 collapses that distinction. It looks like a machine from another world, but its finishing, symmetry, and movement construction are rooted in traditional watchmaking discipline. The watch does not choose between futurism and refinement. It insists that both can occupy the same body.

The most radical decision in HM12 may be that the watch is delivered with The Guardian, a 38.2 cm-tall robot developed by L’Epée 1839. This companion is not a display stand; it is the rest of the being.

The watch detaches from its strap through a quick-release system and mounts directly onto the robot’s head via a secure clipping mechanism. The strap, once removed, is stored in a hidden drawer within the robot’s base. This small detail reveals how completely the concept has been considered. Nothing is treated as an accessory to be set aside. Every part has a place within the ritual.

The Guardian itself comprises 755 components and weighs approximately 15 kg, including its base. At its chest is a mechanical thermometer, described as the robot’s heart. One arm carries a shield with an integrated magnifying glass, allowing the owner to inspect the movement more closely. The other holds a detachable torch with UV capability, designed to activate the Super-LumiNova on both the watch and the robot. The tools are functional, but they are also narrative extensions.

The HM12 also marks a significant moment within MB&F’s creative structure. After two decades of collaboration with the celebrated designer Eric Giroud, who remains a key creative partner on other projects, this is the first Horological Machine conceived and developed entirely by the tandem of Maximilian Büsser and Max Maertens.

Büsser supplied the founding question: what if a robot’s head were a watch? Maertens then became, in the words of the project’s internal logic, the architect and guardian of the idea. Over four years, the concept was drawn, modelled, printed, tested, and refined. The challenge was not simply to make something that looked like a robot’s head. It was to build a coherent mechanical object in which time display, tourbillon, winding system, shield mechanism, sapphire architecture, case proportions and companion body all worked together.

That coherence is what separates HM12 from spectacle. It is visually dramatic, but its drama has structure. Its complexity is not dispersed across unrelated features; it is concentrated around a single proposition. This is a watch imagined as a being, and every mechanical decision reinforces that identity.

HM12 'The Guardian' will be produced in three special editions: blue, purple, and green. There will be 12 creations for each colourway for a total of 36 complete sets. The numbers are small, but the project’s significance is large. It is a watch that revisits the sources of MB&F—childhood imagination, science fiction, mechanical art, collaboration, high finishing, and radical case architecture.

There is a temptation, with objects like this, to treat them as curiosities. The HM12 resists that. Its robot form is playful, but not frivolous. Its shield mechanism is theatrical, but not superficial. Its companion body is fantastical, but not decorative. The Guardian gives the watch context, presence, and ritual. The watch gives the robot its mind. In that exchange lies the achievement of the HM12. It is not a watch pretending to be a robot, nor a robot built merely to display a watch. It is a complete horological concept in which the boundary between wristwatch, sculpture, companion and machine becomes porous.

For MB&F, that feels less like a departure than a return; a return to the child who survived inside the creative adult, to the idea that mechanical objects can carry memories, and to the belief that watchmaking is at its most powerful when it makes us feel something before it asks us to read the time.