Philippe Briand

Award Winning Naval Architect and Yacht Designer

Born in La Rochelle, France and now based in London, Briand has been designing boats since childhood and remains fired by a passion for performance, while his artistic flair ensures that they also look beautiful in the process. Inspired by his father, Michel who represented France in the Dragon Class in the 1968 Olympics, Philippe was already an accomplished dinghy sailor when he started his yacht design career at the age of just 16 with an IOR Quarter Ton design. At the age of 18, an apprenticeship with the noted Swedish designer Pelle Petterson gave him invaluable experience of America’s Cup designs and series-production sailing yachts opening a new world of advanced hydrodynamics, tank testing of hulls, computer aided design and production engineering.

He went on to set up his own company in 1978, since when his career highlights have included winning the 1983 Half-Ton Cup and the 1984 One Ton Cup in yachts of his own design. Later he designed two of the three yachts in the victorious French 1991 Admiral’s Cup team and went on to design for the French and Swiss America’s Cup teams while also designing ever larger series-production sailboats for Bénéteau, Dynamique and CNB. His breakthrough to sailing superyachts came in 1995 when , following a design competition, he was chosen to design the ground-breaking and award-winning 44.7-metre Mari Cha III and later, Mari Cha IV – new and truly lightweight, high-performance cruiser racers that launched him into his current success with sailing superyachts.

Motor yacht design was a natural progression, and a passion, in which he drew on his deep understanding of advanced hydrodynamics to create the efficient and elegant hull designs appropriate for an age where excessive fuel consumption is perceived to be anti-social. Three of this series of ‘Vitruvius’ designs, a 50-metre , a 55-metre, and 73 are afloat while an 80-and another 50 metre will be under construction.

Source: Linktin