The crisp lines and perfect angles from some of the most luxurious yachts in the world have made landfall.
Superyachts continue to wow audiences year after year and some of their owners want to capture the same design they have on their seafaring craft as they do in their homes on land. The designers and engineers of these yachts have taken note and started bringing their expertise from the boating world to houses and condos. The trend may have started with yacht clubs, such as the rendering of one above by design duo March & White. They borrowed the same angle that a prow uses to jut through the sea to capture a yacht-like feel for the building. Then the curve of the exterior lines up with the stern end of many of the world’s largest yachts. These same proportions are showing up in homes on land, along with many more design decisions that adhere to one of the most important rules of boat design: everything has to fulfill requirements of both form and function.
Sweeping staircases are a common example of where practicality meets high-end design on a boat. The stairs are necessary for getting from one level to another but by creating a visual effect on a grand scale they add a sculptural element to the room and create a lightness or ‘floating’ feel to the space. The staircase pictured below is from the Florida home of billionaire Robert Stiller, the founder of EZ Wider and Keurig Green Mountain Coffee and No. 331 on the Forbes 400. The design is by Remi Tessier in collaboration with superyacht engineering company metrica. They went even further with the yacht inspiration by creating a ceiling of bleached oak beams with fillings made from bamboo woven with golden and silver upholstery.
March & White’s first U.S. residential project is outfitting the interiors for the entire 273-unit building in Manhattan’s 125 Greenwich, a building designed by architect Rafael Viñoly. March & White took full advantage of the building’s rounded edges and full height floor-to-ceiling windows to capture the same window-on-the-world feeling you have when you’re sailing the open seas. See below for an example of how the proportions and placement of everything inside creates a subtle prow-like focal point of the room with views over the city.
The designers behind the name, Elliot March and James White, also applied yacht design principles to some of the smaller units, such as this studio which maximizes the space with a custom-designed kitchen tucked in to the wall and a headboard that delineates a bedroom area while also providing an art piece that subtly calls to mind the precision and modern feel of today’s yachts.
While sweeping staircases and smooth lines are some of the more visible design motifs that show up in luxury yachts, it is a feature barely visible to the naked eye that gives these homes their maritime feel. It isn’t just the lines themselves, but how they meet at a corner that makes all the difference.
“We engineer down to the millimeter,” says Mark Mantione, CEO of the North American division for metrica. “Since we’re a European firm one of the challenges is converting drawings to imperial measurements for local architects and contractors. You have to go down to sixty-fourths of an inch.”
Measurements so precise you couldn’t measure them with a pencil tip. Yet, the ultimate result rarely feels still and informal. They are welcoming spaces, despite their exacting precision.
“It is the DNA of the design intent that thin lines will match everywhere exactly and be perfectly aligned with each other,” says Mantione. “The secret is to not overload the overall space with wide lines or joints. It is the magic of thin lines that allows us to avoid creating a look that mimics an “army barracks” style.”
As an example, note the coffered ceiling in the home theater below, whose horizontal lines complement the vertical lines of the far window. Even the slats of the blinds have a balanced feel to all the other straight lines in the room.
Once the dimensions of the rooms have been agreed upon, the next challenge is engineering pieces of furniture that fit in the space and often perform more than one function. One frequent challenge Matione cites is separating the different living spaces in a way that doesn’t waste clearance space with a door and also fits the luxury standards of a superyacht. He often has to engineer completely silent motorized pocket doors that can be as large as fifteen feet high, three inches thick. They have to come out flush with the wall so you can’t even that the see doors are there. (An interesting aside for those looking for the latest in superyacht trends, Mantione says a newer challenge is managing temperature control. “These cryo-spas are all the rage now so the engineering for those is quite difficult especially when you have a [climate-controlled] wine room right next to it.”)
If you want a glimpse of the meticulous detail that goes into these plans, take a spin through these six pictures of the shop drawings for the kitchen in the Florida home metrica worked on. Some of them show half a dozen drawings of the kitchen sink, each one detailing a specific aspect of the project. “We will do fifteen to twenty drawings of every single elevation, floorplan and blowups of all the interfaces: the metal into the wood, wood into glass,” says Mantione.
Both metrica and March & White have applied their engineering background to creating custom-made furniture for yachts, so it is a natural extension to bring that to homes on land too. In this living room from 125 Greenwich, the island at the front of the picture has a pop-out television screen underneath the marble countertop. It is how a seamless tabletop with a high-end finish brings together the luxury element with the delicate intricacies of lift engineering.
Another design of theirs is this Bar C(Art) that is custom-designed for each buyer. Prices start at $50,000 and each unit comes with multi-level control for the different temperatures needed for caviar storage, a cigar humidor (with cutter), drinks, and a Kaelo ice cooler. There’s also a connection for charging electronic devices.
When your surroundings are the oceans of the world, your interior design is inspired by the rays of sunshine and expansive vistas are at your fingertips. But just because you’re spending time on terra firma doesn’t mean you have to give that up completely. Whether it’s a high-rise in New York city, a pool-side home in Florida or how you serve your drinks, yacht design can be yours on land too.
Follow me on Twitter @amydobsonRE
