
SUPERYACHT #513 January 2005
Article selected from our quarterly magazine dedicated to the largest
and most luxurious boats with information, interviews, technical
articles, images and yachting news

Summary

Subscription

Yachting catalogue

Navigation tests

Used boats

Boatshow

Video Nautica

Article by Matteo Antonelli, Marco Pasquini and Andrea Ramazzotti
|
|

THE START-UP
Aspects of superyacht design methodology
Two, three, four, five decks and... if you've got more, add them
on! Today this seems to be the "parameter" that characterises the
magnificence and majesty of the queens if the sea: superyachts.
To this "parameter", which immediately identifies the size in
terms of usable surface area and "cubature", to employ a typically
architectonic term, there is not always a corresponding three-
dimensional and "stylistic" check of the external disposition of
masses. It may even happen that the extremism and the requirements
of owner or yard alter the rhythms, the proportional relationships
visible chiefly in the external architecture of the yacht.
It is in this continual seeking of proportions, relationships
between full and empty, between static and dynamic, between
gracefulness and aggressiveness, between complexity and linearity,
between family feeling and uniqueness that the architect /designer
assumes great responsibility for the final result of the boat-
object.
The close connection between internal and external space is clear
and indubitable. It is almost always the organisation of the
internal spaces that dictates the positioning of the full or empty
masses perceptible from the outside; and in any case, on a smaller
scale, the space perceived and experienced aboard is always
"governed" by the ergonomics of man, understood as the sum of the
three components, anthropometry, biomechanics and proxemics.
These motivations may in brief be considered among the main
variables (without forgetting the regulations of course!) that
determine the external morphology of megayachts.
Another aspect that should not be underestimated is the
construction material. As long as we remain in the sphere of
fibreglass (at present not used on vessels over 45 metres) the
potential for moulding masses, modelling curves and sinuous
surfaces is almost infinite, whereas the use of materials such as
aluminium and steel - due both to their mechanical characteristics
and to the work processes they undergo - limits the possibilities
of three-dimensional modelling. This however takes nothing away
from the magnificent results to which metal megayacht designers
and yards have accustomed us.
We already pointed out how much the design of the interior is
reflected in the exterior. Now let's look at the criteria that
chiefly influence the designer in approaching the subdivision of
the superyacht-object.
Certainly the most important aspect is the owner's customisation.
The first impulse, as conceptual as it is economic, comes
precisely from the customer who often sketches out guidelines for
the yard with the basic ideas or suggestions behind his intentions.
It is the designer's task to fit these desiderata into a design
that highlights their features and at the same time makes the most
of them in an organic and balanced project.
The owner's requests often relate to the spaces and environments
he will be living in personally or to specific functions,
depending on the envisaged use of the superyacht: residence,
holidays, business, showpiece, meetings and so on. Nevertheless in
all cases a basic scheme may be found, a matrix on which to graft,
little by little, certain variants that may be radical to a
greater or lesser degree. Such a scheme of subdivision may be
easily traced in all the superyachts produced or in production and
is based on design themes that take account of both the technical
complexity of the object and the exclusive nature of its function.
We can certainly state that the first need is to sketch out the
hull design in function of the indicated length parameter, select
the construction material and then the building technology.
Having obtained the "container" of the design it must then be
engineered, taking account of any performance requirements
specified by the owner, such as top speed, cruising speed, range etc..
The first "stakes" the designer has to drive in are therefore of a
technical nature: the body onto which the selected subdivisions
will be grafted.
One of the factors conditioning design of the interior is flow,
understood as the overall movements, routes and hierarchies, in a
dynamic key, of the "families" living aboard: the owner and his
guests on the one hand and the crew on the other.
A fundamental requirement is that the various activities on board
be carried out with great discretion, guaranteeing the privacy of
the owner and his guests and good living and working conditions
for the crew. From this derives the need to double, in the design,
both meeting spaces and sleeping spaces, employing differentiated
and detached passageways. Two distinct zones are thus created
whose points of contact are those strictly necessary to the crew
for carrying out their assigned functions.
The hierarchical nature of spaces aboard is valid for both the VIP
and crew areas: if the skipper corresponds to the owner, the
guests correspond to the crew members. The parameters determining
these hierarchies are first of all those deriving from advantages
of position, meaning visibility, privacy, silence, easy access to
the sea etc..
Another extremely topical theme is the relationship with the water
and the design of open air spaces. Interesting evolutions in
recent years have concerned, precisely, the design of these areas
and in many cases are the most important novelties in superyachts
launched over the last few years. If it is true that with the
increase in yacht size the design of interior furnishings moved
increasingly away from a compositional language of naval or
seagoing origin, it is also true that there is now an attempt to
repair that break precisely by "opening" superyacht spaces to the
water and to dialogue with external space through the invention of
solutions and the addition of functions that integrate the passage
from interior to exterior, right down to contact with the
surrounding environment.
In designing interior furnishings a lot depends on inputs from the
customer, and today many fields have been explored in this sense,
with compositional logics ranging from the most classic and
redundant to the essentiality of minimalism. Much still remains to
be written in the field of materials used for interiors. Other
sectors of transportation design seem to be farther ahead, and
many important pleasure craft shipyards have begun to take them as
reference points, especially those yards that have mass production
lines and are therefore far closer to industrial optimisation
logics. It is precisely in this intermediate position, between
pleasure craft and full size ships, where there are no limitations
of money on the one hand and no industrial standardisation
criteria on the other, that the designer can find space to dare
and to experiment with alternative solutions for the creation of
these magnificent superyachts that sail our seas.
|