These references represent what was clearly an inevitable reaction against the infatuation with technology. Much unlike, say, the Centre Pompidou, designed by Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Gianfranco Franchini in 1977, which was truly an important material representation of the triumph of technology (and has always reminded me of Swatch Jellyfish, but I digress). The Pompidou flaunted everything people had previously tried to conceal with its external escalators inside of glass tunnels and brightly color-coded and exposed service systems – strikingly similar to today’s approach to aesthetics in watchmaking and the focus on openwork and skeleton dials. But Patek, in its somewhat staunch techno-cynicism with regard to wristwatches, opened up a whole new design language for itself in the ’70s. “What Patek was saying was, ‘look what we can do, and there’s not even a clear caseback in sight’” explained Toledano.