Design Showcase: Dutch Chic
Louis Postel
02/01/2007

The windows of the Feadship are wide, their cushioned sills low and deep. Curling up on a sill, strategically level with the outer walkway, one feels delightfully close to the rushing water. The positioning of the sill is a small architectural detail, but it signifies new thinking in the Netherlands, where yacht designers are particularly involved with interior architecture as it affects comfort and the overall yachting experience.

Frank Pieterse and Marilyn Bos-de Vaal pioneered new Dutch interior design on such boats as Octopussy. Photography by Urshika. (Click images to enlarge)

Design creativity from the land of the tulip is being praised and embraced around the world: Witness the triumph of Rem Koolhaas in his remarkable design of the Seattle Public Library, as well as the ascendancy of furniture designer Moooi. In the world of luxury yachting, design veterans Frank L. Pieterse and Marilyn Bos-de Vaal of Art-line Interiors have reconfirmed their innovative expertise, and Diederik Fokkema, designer of those Feadship windowsills, has made a stunning debut.

Art-line’s studios along the Rhine, just east of Amsterdam, are busy with six major projects under way. "It’s chaotic, but I am calm," says Pieterse, whose office walls are papered with presentation color boards and clippings. "We are running out of wall space," he says, but his words are inflected with self-effacing irony. (Although his offices are filled with computers, he insists on drawing by hand.) In the studio of his longtime partner, Bos-de Vaal, plastics, metals, cottons and marble samples are combined into experimental "solutions" for yacht interiors. Favoring matte textures for intimate spaces, she reserves glossier, reflective surfaces for public areas. Piles of experimental textiles cover every surface of her studio: fine lace-like tracery that could have been created by nothing other than a seafaring microbe, mermaid hair woven into a translucent seaweed basket, industrial rings that float above undersea dunes. Bos-de Vaal’s studio is a virtual Soho gallery of marine abstract paintings.

Photography by Urshika. (Click images to enlarge)

Although interior design for yachts is governed to a large degree by fire and safety regulations, Pieterse and Bos-de Vaal are committed to innovation. "You should always use different possibilities. That’s what makes a designer," says Pieterse. "I hope my work will always be different, and that I develop as a designer. Even when I was ten years old, I was drawing boats, angling for ways to get the maximum effect from limited space. In Holland, space is indeed limited, and design calls for a lot of creativity."

Working together, Pieterse and Bos-de Vaal have enjoyed much success during their 23-year run, except for a period during the nineties when modern styles took an abrupt detour into the Edwardian camp with a look that featured heavy mahogany. And they have moved on from the techno-glitz of such early career definers as Octopussy and El Corsario. Today, simplicity defines comfort: A wall to one’s back and a view in front mean a lot.

Art-line’s design for Yalla updated earth tones and boldly mixed organic shapes with modern materials. Photography by Urshika. (Click images to enlarge)

"Suddenly," Pieterse says, referring to Art-line’s top-rung status, "we are a little different. Our presentations are stronger. We don’t compromise our ideas about how a yacht should feel. We want people to feel comfortable in the enclosed space. In yachting, they need to be part of the experience and the action. They need room for social interaction and entertaining, but they also need little retreats.

"In Holland," he continues, "we are educated in small houses, and limited space possibilities are part of the culture. Dutch architects, used to limited space and tight financial resources, experiment with economical and efficient use of materials."
Photography by Urshika. (Click images to enlarge)

Designing the interior of the 154-foot Heesen Yalla, the members of the Art-line team started with the skylounge and worked their way down. They used the panorama of the outdoors as their starting point, with the mullions of the windows creating their own smooth rhythm along the skydeck. An open central staircase invites traffic and unites upper and lower salons. Daylight penetrates all three levels. A single palette of soothing colors and textures—a beige base, brown leathers and cottons, a rough marble mosaic, solutions from Bos-de Vaal’s studio—decorate the entire vessel. On other projects, bright contrasting colors signal refreshing, youthful energy.

In his trademark gray trousers and open-collar white shirt, Diederik Fokkema, of Fokkema Architecten in Delft, is a young architect on the move. In September 2006, Fokkema won an award in Monaco for his interior design of Feadship’s SL 39-meter semi-custom yacht line. Fokkema’s day job, so to speak, is designing large office spaces for multinational firms based in Holland. However, as a sailor and occasional racer, Fokkema gets the nature of yachting: water, wind, sky and boat.

Decorators, Fokkema says, take space for granted and start looking for curtains right away. By contrast, architects see a space and want it to do double and triple duty. They use sliding walls, pivoting couches: One side of the wall serves for a PowerPoint screening while the family gathers to watch a film projected on the other side.

Photograph by Urshika. (Click image to enlarge)

The U.S. office-building model is all about bays, rows, cubicles and changing arrangements to increase productivity. "Coffee machines in the U.S. office typically take up three square feet, but in Holland we give them a hundred square feet because, as designers, we know that a lot of creative conversations will take place around coffee machines. Dutch office workers enjoy a lot of freedom, but they respond with initiative and self-discipline. It’s a matter of trust," Fokkema says. On the Feadship yacht, he says, he emphasized freedom and interaction as well, but this time it was in the service of relaxation as opposed to the increased productivity desirable for office spaces.

Diederik Fokkema, won Feadship’s design competition on the strength of his multifunctional spaces for the SL 39. (Click images to enlarge)

When he worked with Pritzker Prize–winning architect Richard Meier in the United States, Fokkema says he learned about finding the "bare meaning" of an architectural program and teasing out its "secrets." This approach is very much in touch with his Dutch sensibility as well, and his focus is always turning to the "bare essence of the program." On large yachts, many of the programs are about ease of adaptation to various uses: personal, friends and family, corporate, charter.

To make the Feadship as multifunctional as possible, for example, Fokkema designed wide, sliding doors that open to its upper bridge. Now it’s possible for everyone to participate in the sailing of the boat, and when those doors are closed, there is room for a bar and buffet. Fokkema sees the sun deck working for cocktails with guests on Saturday evening and being just as useful Sunday morning when the partygoers are ready for strong, hot coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.

Diederik Fokkema's multifunctional spaces for the SL 39. (Click images to enlarge)

Too many of today’s megayachts, Fokkema asserts, are more like floating houses than boats—the action of the boat cut off and the bridge hardly approachable. A boat should be more flexible than a house, he insists. Even a big boat has limited space—space that is needed for a variety of purposes, family and business. "You can’t," Fokkema says, "put everything into one space." So he develops his designs to show that flexibility can significantly alter atmosphere and serve as a space maker.

Today’s Dutch modernists—architects such as Fokkema and designers such as Pieterse and Bos-de Vaal—are no longer out in the cold, on the outer walkway, as it were, of the megayacht design world. Yacht enthusiasts are embracing the solutions of these visionaries, designs that emphasize fun, participation and comfort in well-planned, flexible spaces.