Meridion VX01-E is Voxel's first watch, a Swiss automatic timepiece built around a proprietary 12/24 jumping-hours complication, developed over four years and produced as a limited run. It was conceived by two founders, a French creative director and a Swiss microtechnology engineer who set out to solve a specific problem: making a watch that reads clearly at a glance, day or night, without leaning on a conventional GMT.
Understanding how Meridion was built says as much about independent watchmaking today as it does about the watch itself. Here's the story, told with the facts that actually shaped it.
What is the voxel meridion ?
The Voxel Meridion is Edition 01 of Voxel, a French-Swiss independent watchmaking maison. It's built around a decagonal case architecture and Voxel's in-house 12/24 jumping-hours module, a display that reads in a familiar 12-hour format from 1:00 AM to 12:59 PM, then jumps to a 24-hour format from 1:00 PM to 12:59 AM.
The collection launches in three dial colourways Charcoal Grey, Electric Blue, and Silver Star with seven interchangeable bracelet and strap options sharing a tool-free, quick-release system.
Specifications, as published by Voxel:
- Swiss automatic movement (Soprod Newton P092 base) with an in-house 12/24 jumping-hours module
- Case in 904L steel and Grade 5 titanium
- Sapphire crystal, anti-reflective
- 120m water resistance
- 44-hour power reserve, 4Hz beat rate
- Swiss Super-LumiNova
- Quick-release strap system
- 41.4–45.5mm lug-to-lug
Meridion is priced from €2,500 (Alcantara strap editions) to €2,850 (integrated 904L steel bracelet). The collection was revealed in September 2026, with preorders opening 1 October 2026 across a limited run of 300 pieces; the first 50 orders will receive a complimentary Alcantara strap.
The Idea Behind Meridion
Voxel was founded in 2022 by Thibault Luc, an entrepreneur and creative director who had previously founded the watch brand Aight in 2012 a venture that included an exclusive collection with the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Driven by an interest in travel, architecture and design.
His technical counterpart is Bruno Herbet, a microtechnology engineer trained in the Vallée de Joux, with over 15 years developing movements, prototypes and industrialisation processes alongside some of Switzerland's most respected watchmakers. Herbet is the engineer behind Meridion's complication.
The idea that shaped Meridion was less about decoration and more about a genuine readability problem: telling AM from PM at a glance, without adding a second hand, a rotating bezel, or a sub-dial to check. Rather than adapt an existing GMT complication, Voxel built a jumping-hours display that alternates between 12-hour and 24-hour formats twice a day a mechanical answer to a question most travellers actually ask, rather than the second-time-zone problem a GMT solves.
From Concept to Watch
Voxel's own published timeline traces Meridion's development across four years, from first sketch to finished object.
2022 — Initial concept
The vision for Voxel emerges: a contemporary interpretation of horology rooted in movement and presence, combining French creative direction with Swiss mechanical engineering.
2023–2024 — Developing the complication
The proprietary 12/24 jumping-hours system is developed, refined, and progressively brought into mechanical reality. Rather than engineering an entirely new base movement from scratch, Voxel built its module onto a Swiss automatic base caliber (Soprod's Newton P092), a common and transparent approach among independent brands, who often concentrate their engineering effort on the proprietary complication itself rather than reinventing a base going-train that already meets Swiss precision standards.
2025 — Form and case architecture
The collection's design and decagonal case architecture are progressively refined through prototyping, in pursuit of harmony between form, proportion and presence, with a stated focus on durability, precision and mechanical integrity.
2026 — Reveal and production
Edition 01- Meridion comes to life. The watch is revealed in September 2026, in three dial colourways and seven bracelet/strap combinations, cased in 904L steel and Grade 5 titanium with a sapphire crystal and Swiss Super-LumiNova. Preorders open 1 October 2026.
Voxel describes its production philosophy as four disciplined stages, concept, prototype, industrialize, reveal, "a process where nothing reaches the wrist before it reaches precision."
What Independent Watchmaking Means
An independent watchmaker is generally understood, in the industry itself, through three overlapping criteria rather than a single legal definition:
- Ownership: the brand is privately founded and controlled, not owned by one of the large watch groups that own most of the industry's household names.
- Creative and technical control: the people who founded the brand retain direct authorship over design and movement development, rather than sourcing a finished product from a third-party manufacturer.
- Scale: production runs at a human scale, often numbered in the dozens, hundreds, or low thousands of pieces a year, rather than industrial volume.
This is the framework recognised, in practice, by the AHCI (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants), the Geneva-founded association that has represented independent watchmakers since 1985. Not every brand that calls itself "independent" satisfies all three criteria equally, which is precisely why the term is worth defining clearly rather than using it as a marketing label.
Meridion and Independent Watchmaking
Voxel meets this definition directly. It is privately founded by Thibault Luc and Bruno Herbet, who retain full creative and technical direction over the brand; there is no parent group. The 12/24 jumping-hours module was developed specifically for Meridion between 2023 and 2024, rather than licensed as an off-the-shelf complication.
Where Voxel is transparent, and deliberately so, is on the base movement: Meridion's automatic caliber starts from a Soprod Newton P092 base, onto which Voxel's proprietary jumping-hours module is built. This is standard practice across independent watchmaking, very few young independent brands engineer a base going-train entirely from zero, and it's a more honest account of how Meridion was actually made than an unqualified "in-house movement" claim would be.
Vallée de Joux and Its Watchmaking Heritage
The Vallée de Joux is a valley in the canton of Vaud, in the Jura mountains of western Switzerland. It is widely regarded as one of the birthplaces of high-complication Swiss watchmaking, a reputation that dates back to the first half of the 18th century, when local farmers, trained in watchmaking in Geneva, began dividing their time between farming in summer and precision work through the long winters.
That seasonal rhythm grew into a concentrated watchmaking culture. Jaeger-LeCoultre was founded in the valley in 1833; Audemars Piguet followed in 1875 in Le Brassus; Blancpain and Breguet also established a presence in the region. Today, the Vallée de Joux is home to roughly twenty watch manufacturers and its own watchmaking technical school, and its residents, known as Combiers, are still closely associated with grandes complications, the most technically demanding category of mechanical watchmaking. Philippe Dufour, widely cited as one of the most influential independent watchmakers of the past forty years, was born in Le Sentier, in the Vallée de Joux.
Voxel's connection to the valley is a human one, not a manufacturing claim: co-founder and technical director Bruno Herbet trained as a microtechnology engineer in the Vallée de Joux, developing his craft there over more than 15 years before co-founding Voxel. Meridion itself is Swiss Made.
