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After a long
Saint-Tropezian night of dining, dancing and meeting this season’s glitterati,
you return with your amour at 5 a.m. to your motor yacht. The idea is to
retreat to the vessel’s private realm and quietly observe "rosy-fingered
dawn" appear over the Mediterranean just as it did in Homer’s day.
As you step on board, entering aft, and proceed through the
salon’s double doors, you’re hit with blinding, shocking light that instantly
ruins the Homeric mood. The salon light has been set way too bright. You feel
your pupils closing down, making it impossible to see out, much less see that
rosy-fingered dawn.
This is a key challenge for yacht designers today: to make sure
that everything in the interior, especially the lighting, enhances the owner’s
mood and doesn’t disturb it. Transitions from the dark aft section to the salon
should be gentle, both psychologically and emotionally intelligent. A dinner
lighting scheme set on your Crestron or Lantic keypad should be very different
from one set for business meetings. All the latest technical innovations must be
brought into play aboard a motor yacht, and at $1 million per meter, is that
really too much to ask?
 Advances in lighting can create a range of
moods from romantic, to wake-up call (shown here). Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)
Yacht designers Carl Pickering and Claudio Lazzarini of
Lazzarini Pickering Architetti in Rome think about lighting and its various
calibrations of mood every step of the way. Experimenting with new lighting
products and techniques is for them a way life.
"Lighting becomes a portrait of our client," says Lazzarini.
"It has to fit how our client imagines life aboard that boat."
Whether it’s the Wally 118, Benetti’s 115-foot Sai Ram
or Stefano Gabbana’s 167-foot Regina d’Italia, all are unique, but at the
same time linked to the firm’s sensitivity to the various effects of light on
mood. "Serene theatricality" is the firm’s modus operandi. Nowhere is this more
evident than on Gabbana’s yacht, whose fashion firm Dolce & Gabbana has
serene theatricality down to a T.
"He didn’t want any diffused lighting at all on the
Regina," says Pickering, "just halogens spotlighting various objects and
fabrics. He wanted us to pick those out and distinguish them."
 Seamless lighting schemes blur the distinction between outside and in. Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)
To make sure there’s a rich, golden hue around people as well
as objects, the architect recommends a halogen slightly dimmed down from 3,000
kilowatts to 2,800 kilowatts, similar to an incandescent globe. On a new Nauta
motor sailer, Lazzarini and Pickering are reinterpreting traditional,
battery-powered lamps to be used inside as well as outside the boat. They’ve
already encountered a few waterproofing problems, but the idea is you can take
the lamps out to the deck and place them around like candles in a garden. After
a year of working with prototypes, Pickering says they’ve found a way to create
lighting continuity or seamlessness throughout. The continuity is critical, he
says, because the deckhouse is all glass and you can see the glow right through
it.
"It’s still top secret. All I can say is that it involves a CAD
(computer-aided design) system ordinarily used for industrial sewing patterns,
called Polytropon." Also on the drawing boards for the Nauta is an
anti-reflective night-vision glass that encases an internal Freon-based
filter. "We’re still waiting until the glass is finished before we decide to use
it or not."
 Before the advent of LEDs, crew had to check daily for burned-out halogen bulbs. Photograph by Matteo Piazza. (Click image to enlarge)
One thing the firm doesn’t do is over-light. "We always put the
least lighting possible. It’s amazing how much your pupils will dilate if given
the chance. After all, you’re here to see the sea, the moon and stars. We want
the attention to be on what’s around the boat, not the boat itself," says
Lazzarini.
His partner Pickering adds: "The Las Vegas concept of lighting
pervading the industry now makes me seasick. We were in Monte-Carlo looking out
at the show and all the yachts were turning red, green and blue with special
effects. That’s the antithesis of what we’re trying to achieve. What we’re
aiming for is cozy, intimate, warm light with a golden quality. One that is, as
I said before, serenely theatrical."
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