Philippe Bestenheider was born in Sion, Switzerland, in 1971 and graduated in architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 1998. After working with studios in Switzerland and the United States, he specialised in industrial design at Domus Academy in Milan, where he later led workshops, and from 2001 to 2006 he was senior designer in Patricia Urquiola's Milan studio. He opened his own studio in 2007 and works between Switzerland and Milan, combining Italian creativity with Swiss rigour.
For Varaschin he designed MAAT, a lounge armchair and a dining armchair with soft, sinuous and enveloping volumes. Its defining feature is a wide, hand-made weave of synthetic fibre in a geometric pattern; in the dining armchair, four tapes in different colours cross to form the weave, on a structure that joins legs and back.
For Billiani he designed Edelweiss, a collection of chairs and stools that draws on traditional Alpine seating, in which seat and backrest meet in a slotted joint. The interlocking back and seat put the plywood construction on display; one version carries ten circular perforations in the backrest, and a solid-back version accompanies it.
