Rado High-Tech Ceramic Lab: Where The Future Of Watchmaking Becomes Tangible

Imagine Switzerland, 1917: in the quiet village of Lengnau, far from the glamour of international watchmaking capitals, three brothers — Fritz, Ernst and Werner Schlup — establish Schlup & Co. In the modest surroundings of their parents’ home. 

Their ambition is neither theatrical nor grandiose: it is simply to make exceptional watch movements. Yet from this humble family workshop would emerge one of Swiss watchmaking’s most determined material innovators. 

By 1957, forty years after the company’s founding, the brothers introduced the Rado brand with the Golden Horse, giving their new marque a name meaning “wheel” in Esperanto and a philosophy that would become almost prophetic: “If we can imagine it, we can make it. And if we can make it, we will.” 

Nearly seven decades later, that audacious sentence feels less like a slogan than a blueprint. At Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, from 9 to 20 September 2026, Rado brings its extraordinary material imagination to life with the Rado High-Tech Ceramic Lab — making its global debut in Malaysia and offering an unusually intimate encounter with the substance that has helped define the brand as the Master of Materials.

This is not simply a watch exhibition. It is an invitation to understand what sits beneath the seductive surface of a Rado timepiece.

The immersive pop-up takes visitors behind the polished façade of high-tech ceramic, transforming material science into something tactile, visual and unexpectedly fascinating. 

Interactive installations trace the material’s journey from its beginning as ultra-pure zirconium oxide powder through colouring, moulding, sintering, machining and finishing. 

Pigments are introduced to create distinctive colours before the material is mixed with a polymer binder and injected into precision moulds at around 1,000 bar. It is subsequently sintered at an extraordinary 1,450°C, producing a remarkably dense material with a hardness of 1,250 Vickers. 

And therein lies the particular poetry of Rado. Ceramic, in its ordinary conception, sounds almost elemental; in Rado’s hands, it becomes sophisticated watchmaking architecture. The material is exceptionally scratch-resistant yet remarkably light, silky against the skin and capable of rapidly adapting to body temperature. 

It is this curious marriage of resilience and sensuality — toughness without heaviness, technological complexity with almost effortless wearability — that makes high-tech ceramic so compelling. Rado introduced the material into serial production in 1986, continuing a trajectory of material experimentation that had already seen the brand pioneer scratch-resistant watchmaking with the DiaStar in 1962. 

The Lab goes further, revealing how colour and finish become part of Rado’s visual vocabulary. Polished, brushed and matt surfaces offer radically different personalities, while plasma high-tech ceramic achieves a metallic appearance without actually being metal: white ceramic is transformed through a process involving carbon to produce its distinctive sheen. 

“At Rado, innovation begins with materials. The High-Tech Ceramic Lab allows visitors to experience our expertise firsthand and to understand how decades of research, creativity, and craftsmanship have shaped our unique approach to watchmaking. We want people to discover not only what makes high-tech ceramic exceptional, particularly its remarkable wearing comfort and unique feel, but also the passion and pioneering spirit behind every Rado creation,” says Adrian Bosshard, CEO of Rado.

There is something wonderfully revealing about this proposition. Rado’s achievement is not merely that it made ceramic desirable; it made the material itself part of the conversation about what a watch could be. 

From the scratch-resistant audacity of the DiaStar to high-tech ceramic, plasma ceramic and ever more expressive contemporary forms, Rado has repeatedly questioned the traditional hierarchy of watchmaking — reminding us that innovation does not always have to announce itself through mechanical complexity. Sometimes, it begins with what the watch is made of. 

The exhibition culminates in a curated presentation of Rado watches, where material ingenuity finally becomes design. And perhaps that is the Lab’s most compelling lesson: luxury is not merely what catches the eye. Sometimes, it is what the eye cannot immediately see — the research, precision, experimentation and sheer persistence concealed within something worn so effortlessly on the wrist.

At Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, Rado makes that invisible world visible. And in doing so, the Master of Materials offers a fascinating reminder that the future of watchmaking may begin not with the question of what time looks like, but with the more provocative question: what, exactly, should time be made of?

*Photos courtesy of Rado.