Landscape Information
Located southeast of the town center on 93-acres of former agricultural land, this corporate campus serves as a physical manifestation of the heritage of time keeping. Designed in 2001 by landscape architects Jack Curtis + Associates and architect Douglas Disbrow of Fletcher Tompson, Inc., in collaboration with Timex chairman and owner Thomas Fredrik (“Fred”) Olsen, the property features an 85,000-square-foot building perched atop an oval shaped hillock, named Watch Hill. Accessed by a curvilinear entry drive, the headquarters building includes a convex south-facing façade, a vaulted dome roof with an oculus, and expanses of transparent insulated glass to afford its inhabitants 360-degree views of the surrounding fields, meadows and forests. Constructed to match the contour of the site’s natural terrain, the structure’s lower level is set fifteen feet below grade.
Framed by a row of evenly spaced deciduous canopy trees, a meadow expanse foregrounds the structure, perched atop the northern portion of the hillock. The row of trees extends north to form an arced allées on each side of the meadow. The base of this highpoint is encircled by a pedestrian path, which connects to the building’s main eastern entrance and western amphitheater, oriented on axis with one another. The path is anchored to the south by site-specific artwork, “Woodhenge,” which, is intended to evoke historical time-telling devices and consists of a circle of fifteen-foot-tall bicolor wooden posts that align with the sun at certain times of the year. Heading south, the path meets a parking area, purposefully sited one-quarter mile from the building’s entrance to promote employee physical activity. Concealed by a densely canopied coniferous grove, the parking area is integrated into the landscape and sited below the tree line screening it from the headquarter's viewshed.
The property is not currently open to the public.
