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[ WOMEN & DESIGN ]
A YACHT IS A
S H E!
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There may be many more of them than you imagined women in yacht design who help make owners’ dreams even more beautiful and stylish. Enterprising, creative, sensitive and strong, their skills enable them to add value in a design sector that until now has been a maledominated preserve. And these women are always ready for new challenges
by Désirée Sormani
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[ WOMEN & DESIGN ] 45M ROYAL DENSHIP - (LUSBEN) ROSE PIGRE
MAELA LENCI
MICHELA REVERBERI LENCI MARINE - MARIA VITTORIA
“I spent a lot of time at the yard. I had experience of all the skill sets, and dressed in my work overalls I listened and learnt. I didn’t see any differences based on my gender”
IVANA PORFIRI
“I felt a real urgency about putting myself against the challenges presented by a sector like yacht design, creating something sophisticated with a natural, timeless beauty”
N
o longer rare pearls, women are gaining a higher profile in the yacht design world, a workplace that until a few years ago was a male preserve where women were an almost invisible presence.
BAGLIETTO - NINA J
Now, though, their creativity, sensitivity, precision and determination are helping them attract
a great deal of attention. Wonderfully capable, they interpret owners’ dream, imbuing their yachts with personality and style. The ONE Yacht and Design has gone in search of these female trailblazers, and has found them in many famous design studios and yacht-building yards. Some have taken the plunge, opening their own studio and making a name for themselves on the international scene. This means that things are changing in the professional development sector, too. “We’ve been offering a Masters in Yacht Design at the Politecnico di Milano for twenty years now. During this time we’ve seen many changes”, says Silvia Piardi, Honorary Professor at Politecnico di Milano and former Director of the Design Department. It used to be that out of twenty-five students enrolling on the course only four or five would be women, now they make up a third of the total. However, the sector is still male-dominated, but this reflects the situation in the wider design sector. For many years the PoliMi has promoted initiatives to increase the number of women choosing to enter engineering. While the students in
“I started out designing interiors for Costa Crociere ships, then I moved on to fantastic yachts. I enabled spaces to breathe in my designs. That was twenty-five years ago! 134
product design courses are mainly male, interior design is dominated by female students. Why is it that women create only yacht interiors and not exterior lines? “This is also the case in terrestrial architecture”, says Patricia Viels. With the international Citterio Viels studio she designs all aspects of the yachts, and together they handled the interiors of the Custom Line Navetta 30 and some previous Sanlorenzo models. “It’s true, there are many female interior designers but not many architects in the sector I come from. We’d like to increase our presence there”. There’s never been a yacht entirely created by a woman.
FRANCESCA ORIO FRANCESCA BURDISSO
65M FEADSHIP - FREEDOM
RIVA 88’ FOLGORE - OID
RSY 38M EXP
“I come from a different world, industrial design, so without blowing my own trumpet I think I’ve introduced solutions and trends from design and architecture to the project”
FRANCESCA MUZIO
“A design can be considered “feminine” when it’s communicative, evocative and emotional. And, most of all, when it brings a sense of tactility to the interiors”
“I think that the added value doesn’t derive from the designer’s gender, but his or her sensibility and awareness. I like to think I’m appreciated for my commitment and precision”
Years ago tried star architect Zaha Hadid with the design of Jazz, a 90-metre for Blohm+Voss that looked like an exoskeleton. It was too early, the time wasn’t right for that vision. But Francesca Orio would readily take up the challenge. For ten years she has been part of the team formed around Mauro Micheli and Sergio Beretta in Officina Italiana Design, developing interiors for Riva. “I follow all the stages of the concept up to launch, from the initial volumetric studies to details of style, selecting materials, but I’d love to try the exteriors of a yacht”. Michela Reverberi, an architect who has worked in yacht design since the 1990s, is already on the case . “I’ve been working on a new concept that I hope will soon be built. Yacht design is a field where men are in the majority, but women are asserting themselves”. Among these was Maela Lenci, who led the company. “Lenci Marine was founded in 1989, and in the 1990s we designed pleasure craft and in 2003 I took the reins. My father, an industrial designer, worked on the superstructure. I spent a lot of time in the yard: it was my school”. Her passion and work are rooted in her childhood. “The sea and design have been part of life since I was little”, says Laura Avogadri, who has worked for some time in Officina Italiana Design, “During holiday time
SUNREEF - SUNREEF 80’
I think that what I bring to the sector as a woman is a profound sensitivity to designing details and material elements while respecting the necessary complex spaces on board the yachts”
my evenings always included a walk around the harbour, looking at all the sail yachts and wondering what they were like inside”. Another example is Martina Zuccon, born into the business and now at the helm, together with her brother Bernardo, of the design studio founded by her parents Gianni Zuccon and Paola Galeazzi. “When the other kids went to a theme park I was taken to the Genoa Boat
GIUSEPPINA ARENA
Show to see the yachts Mum and Dad had designed. In our experience it’s hard to split the design process into different parts”. It’s also impossible to imagine separating exterior and interior, it’s much easier to think of them as operating in harmony. Costanza Pazzi, who joined the Ferretti Group around 135
[ WOMEN & DESIGN ] 72M TANKOA YACHTS - M/Y SOLO
PATRICIA URQUIOLA
LAURA POMPONI
SANLORENZO SD96
“It is not a question of a maledominated world, but of how best to tackle this truism. I grew up in a male group of friends and studying engineering really helped me to better understand the male team-building way of acting in life, not just working” “Being a woman has never stopped me. I’ve always experienced a balance of male and female in my family and cultural milieu”
LAURA SESSA
MARGHERITA CASPRINI
“Right from the start I’ve approached a male world by trying to understand the dynamics, adding something rather than changing them. That’s my professional approach”
BENETTI 70 M - MY ALFA
twelve years ago as interiors design manager, says, “I’m now Project Architect, I follow CRN’s true custom yachts owners in their stylistic choices and I become a point of contact between clients and the yard. I follow the design of the volumes and offer solutions that suit the client’s style for interiors and exteriors”. But some see the boat from the inside then look at it again from the balanced, aligned exterior. “In yacht building I interact with my colleagues, in this case all men, who design wonderful exteriors. I can only think of how to contribute to their work and seek an equilibrium between exterior and interior, often suggesting changes”, says Marjiana Radovic, co-founder with her partner Marco Bonelli of m2atelier studio, which occupies the sweet spot between residential, product design and LÜRSSEN - MADSUMMER
“I think there isn’t always a real difference between male and female design. It’s all about good sense applied to the harmony of a style – together they create the ideal interior” 136
yacht design, bringing touches of style from the residential sector. “The hotel industry, too”, adds Margherita Casprini, who collaborates on interiors with Francesco Paszkowski Design. “It’s a migration of ideas that I think is the result of an increasingly expert and demanding clientele, a different way of experiencing the sea and the fact that more and more the yacht embodies an idea of freedom and privacy. In all this, women bring a more all-round vision to the design work”. These views bring a breath of fresh air to a traditionally rather stuffy nautical industry. However, architect Francesca Burdisso, who has spent time with Ferretti and now shares a studio in Ravenna with Emiliano Capponi, thinks that although she has contributed during her career to introducing solutions, styles, and trends
MARIJANA RADOVIC CUSTOM LINE - NAVETTA 30”
KELLY HOPPEN
“I was approached to design Edge for Celebrity Cruises and was excited at the challenge of changing the face of the cruises industry. Then we launched two yachts with Pearl Yachts. I approach any project as designing luxury private homes”
MANGUSTA 165 REV
PATRICIA VIELS
PEARL YACHTS - PEARL 95
“We’ve tried to highlight the extraordinary aspects of a yacht’s interiors, transferring all our knowledge and drawing in elements from the residential world without transforming it into a house”
“I think my approach to yachts is neither feminine nor masculine, it’s contemporary and receptive to the needs of a constantly-changing world. You have to be sensitive and aware to be able to understand and interpret these requirements”
MARTINA ZUCCON
from design and architecture, “Now this type of cross-fertilisation has become such a universal phenomenon that I think we should go back and take another look at nautical tradition. It has only temporarily been set aside, and should always remain as a vital point of reference”. Like her, many other daring designers have made the great leap by opening studios whose approach covers a number of sectors. Francesca Muzio was Creative Director of the Interior Design Department di CRN until 2009, but then decided to take advantage of her feminine touch. Now her FM Architettura studio works on yacht, hotel and residential interiors. “Feminine design is about balance and harmony, about beauty and gracefulness and it can help combine design and functionality, without having one pushing the other into the background”, she says. “These crazy times have brought awareness about the importance of domestic comfort and we’ve realized that people are looking for ways to deal with the lack of human touch”. This approach demands skill, but also means accepting some daunting challenges. Like those taken on by Laura Pomponi, who after a long stint in shipyards has opened her Luxury Project studio: “What I actually like about building a yacht is the intricacy of the process. It’s like a DNA helix, and I love solving these complex issues. For sure my technical background (a degree in technical engineering and a PhD in engineering - ed) has helped me a lot, even if in yachting it seems that being female means you need to try harder and be agreeable at all times. Laura Sessa, who has
SANLORENZO ALLOY
“The interior design world is made up of choices that mainly involve putting together materials, colours and a knowledge of their characteristics. Women have a stronger sense of this than men”
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[ WOMEN & DESIGN ] 50 M ROSSINAVI - LEL
LAURA AVOGADRI
FRANCESCA ATTUONI RIVA DIABLE - OID
“A different view of the project, a new point of view shaped by an emotionality and awareness, which are qualities of the female world. Looking at something from a new viewpoint is bound to add value”
“The ability to enter into harmony with a space and the people who will live in it, isn’t necessarily a female trait, but it’s certainly more pronounced in people who feel with their heart and think with their head. And that’s almost always a woman”
“Women designers have an intuitive sense, an ability to be flexible and adapt to the development of a project that in a sector like the nautical industry can contribute to the successful outcome of a project” BAGLIETTO - SILVER FOX
CARLOTTA MALATESTA
COSTANZA PAZZI
CRN - CLOUD9
never been inclined see gender differences in her career, does not allow herself to be intimidated by the dominant presence of men in the sector. “In fact, I believe that we all have different types of experience to offer, and I think that fact I’ve worked for ten years on sail yacht projects has led me to study and make use of spaces in a functional, almost obsessive way to avoid wasting any space”. Giuseppina Arena deploys architectural rigour and the sensibilities of an interior designer. “Working at military naval shipyards and luxury yacht yards means I can now visualise interior spaces with a controlled yet innovative creativity”. They say that curiosity is female, and it’s certainly true that Carlotta Malatesta uses hers to help express her versatility at the Luca Dini Design &Architecture studio. “Unbridled curiosity and influences from design, architecture, fashion and decoration in general are my constant sources of inspiration”. What this means is that when managing an interior design women have an exceptional talent for interpreting clients’ desires. Francesca Attuoni, Interior Designer Manager at Baglietto, believes firmly in the truth of this. “I hope that meritocracy and professionalism can find a role in a workplace like the nautical sector, which
“A woman can bring value through intense attention to detail and use of spaces, designed to fulfil the needs of on-board life. Working with illustrious female architects has really enriched my life” 138
is dominated by a mainly masculine presence. It should apply to men and women, with mutual recognition of the work we do”. There’s no shortage of recognition for Patricia Urquiola, a well-known architect in the residential and product design sectors. She recently designed the interiors of the Sanlorenzo SD96, taking a measured approach to her work, giving her stylistic hallmarks a nautical interpretation. Massimo Perotti chose her because he wanted to bring a more feminine approach to the yard’s work. “Patricia has the ability to blend beauty and comfort, always with a touch of irony and awareness”, said the Executive Chairman of Sanlorenzo. A lovely compliment that bodes well for the future of women in the entire sector.