Probably Not Too Soon…

Working on speculative projects always is an amazing experience and a great opportunity to push the boundaries as far as you dare. In the end, there are only a few limits and the main goal is to attract attention. It’s a little bit like the fashion business: The high couture usually stays on the cat walks, but it makes the designer famous.

“Thinking of fashion, I never really understood the purpose of this exercise. Why designing something that nobody can wear?” muses Christian Leyk. “When we design on a speculative base, we still keep in mind that somebody might want to build it.”

Apart from the fact that proposing something impossible might end in disappointment (the wrong side of ‘famous’), we also make sure that our designs are believable. There is, at least from the designer’s point of view, nothing worse than all those fancy renderings in the ‘new design’ section of Yacht Design that make you think ‘oh no, not another student of architecture’. But, as mentioned above, it’s all about getting attention and trying things an actual client might not ask for. It’s a showcase of what’s possible, so while we might not always do the whole calculations, we certainly keep the limits of physics in mind.

“Designers like to joke about Unoptanium’ being their favourite material, and we all love transparent aluminium! But jokes aside, some things that look impossible at first glance are actually not too difficult to achieve. Still, designs like the 144 metre concept ‘Ghost’ and the 145m ‘Fortissimo’ which I designed with Ken Freivokh in collaboration with the Fincantieri shipyard in Italy might be a little bit too outlandish to make their splash in the next few years. That is not to say that they won’t, but it certainly takes a client with vision to make them reality.”