Filipino architect and designer Edwin Uy opened a new atelier in Makati City, displaying and selling products from the Swiss company Röthlisberger. The first distributor of the brand in Southeast Asia, its uncommon mix of minimalist residential design and easy, no-frills construction makes it a singular addition to the Philippine market today.
The Röthlisberger company was originally founded in 1928 as a fit-out construction company. Their cutting-edge offerings have evolved over the century, and starting from 1977, they launched the Röthlisberger Kollektion, a series of designer furniture that they continue on today. This company remains family-owned, already in the fourth generation of Röthlisbergers taking the helm of the company.
Edwin Uy first discovered the company after he noticed a piece of furniture in his husband’s house: the Schubladenstapel. Translating to “stack of drawers,” the piece is exactly that: seven drawers of varying sizes, each representing a day of the week,and slightly askew from the other.
“The piece was outstanding in design and precision,” Uy said. “The level of craftsmanship in wood was very high. The pandemic came in 2020 as we all know… and I was stuck in Switzerland at that time. As I was looking at the same piece over and over again, I then thought, ‘since I have this old house which I recently acquired, I thought it would be nice to bring this brand to the Philippines.’”
The architect found a kindred spirit in company owner Jan Röthlisberger, discovering a shared philosophy rooted in design and craftsmanship. They inked a deal that allowed Uy to be the first distributor of their products in Southeast Asia.
“Being an architect, I have seen and am familiar with what the Philippines has to offer, I knew that their collection is something we have not seen,” he elaborated. “I found it a perfect furniture brand to represent and share the Swiss design I have appreciated for a number of years.”
The atelier at Makati, a small two-storey house, is the perfect venue to present the modestly-sized furniture pieces. It does not take up too much space, and many of the pieces are built to be multifunctional; the Bank Plus, for example, is a bench that can be modified to be used as a table.
For the Röthlisberger Kollektion, an interesting aspect of its design is its minimal use of connecting fasteners like nails, screws, and bolts. Rather, a lot of their furniture is designed to have the different parts interlock together. Pieces like the Takushi table are easy to assemble and sturdy without needing any specific toolset or carpentry experience to put it together.
One of the outcomes of this feature is that the collection looks sleek and cohesive, with little to no metal parts impeding how the furniture looks. The minimalist design also helps with the cohesion, giving pieces a tonal connectedness.
Overall, these are an incredible feat of Swiss construction, both with its functional composition and its unique yet unified aesthetic that allows it to blend in the background or stand out in a place—depending on what an owner wants for it. Edwin Uy said that he was attracted to the efficiency and practicality that these pieces embodied.
“What I like most from the Rö collection is it is small unlike most major European designer brands which carry a huge line up of pieces,” Uy shared. “The designs are timeless of which most of their collection still dates back to the 1970s and still works to this very day.”
In this collection of furniture pieces, Edwin Uy found a sense of design authenticity that he feels Filipinos can learn from. The methodology found in Röthlisberger, from its ability to produce classic, no-frills designs to its ability to find provocative solutions to production problems, should be something that Filipinos should seek to emulate in their own designs.
“They are good at it and I hope designers also see this as an inspiration of sorts with their respective practices and applications in design,” Uy said. “Pure pieces of wood furniture that do not try to complicate things; honesty of materials and allowing the properties of such materials shine on its own.
“The philosophies of design, whether in furniture design or architecture [or] interior design, it all remains the same,” he continued. “Applications differ between scale but at the end of the day, the roots of design are where all are connected.”
Photos by Ed Simon.
Related reading: Architect Edwin Uy Reshapes Kitchen Spaces with Boffi
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