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Designers are creating stunningly beautiful floors and setting the stage
for the grand drama of yachting.
by Louis Postel
photography by Neil Rabinowitz
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10/01/2007
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Proportion may be the essence, but a healthy investment surely
helps with the details. Dell’Anna tells the story of one client who basically
told him he was "mad" for making him spend so much money on silk carpets in the
staterooms. At $1,500 to $2,000 per square meter, wouldn’t wool do instead?
Dell’Anna took him to a boat show to show him the difference firsthand: the
radiant brilliance of silk, its uncanny ability to capture light, causing the
twisted strands to glow in unique ways. And that’s all it took; one look, one
touch, according to Dell’Anna. Now the client insists on silk.
Top: Blue patterned flooring on Oasis. Photograph by Klaus Jordan. Bottom:
Ambrosia’s study is paved in leather. Photograph by Bill Muncke and Ingo. (Click images to enlarge)
Renaissance Italians practically invented what we think of
today as "palatial," so when creating "floating palaces," it’s good to bear in
mind their absolute obsession with perspective. A distant point, a dramatic,
powerful view was more important than breathing. That’s how the sunburst design
works on the marble floor of Attessa’s main-deck conservatory salon. The
most impressive floor design of Glade Johnson’s to date, the sunburst pattern
sweeps the eye along just as you enter the aft doors into a grand perspective.
Coupled with a silk paneled ring recessed in the ceiling along with a Lalique
lighting fixture, the sunburst marble on the floor points you majestically into
the mid-lounge and then even deeper into the forward lounge. Those 20 feet of
marble aft form a kind of staging area for all the design elements that
follow.
"The real challenge with marble is weight," says Johnson, who
is based in Seattle, Washington. "But it’s just another layer of complication,
an additional cost. You need very sophisticated craftspeople bonding
quarter-inch marble panels to an aluminum honeycomb [base]. And now with
waterjet technology, you can cut very intricate patterns. The patterns and grout
lines help prevent slipping, instead of just having a large expanse of polished
stone. We really prefer a combination of wood and stone together, with a more
formal look on the main deck and main salon. Then as you meander through the
space to the upper-deck salon there would be more wood and less marble. Just a
bit more casual."
Top: Concentric circles on Phoenix create a
centripetal force to the carpet’s disparate elements. Photograph by Stéphane Bravin. Bottom: Dark curves break
up the white in Force Blue’s
bath. Photograph by Marc Paris. (Click images to enlarge)
Jeff Homchick of Luxe Stone Technology was the installer on the
Attessa project and works with many of the major shipyards: Westport,
Christensen, Delta Marine, Trinity and now Lürssen. With 3,000 slabs in stock
and another 2,500 on order, Homchick can show customers what the floor will
actually look like as opposed to a three-inch-square chip or by visiting stone
quarries around the world. But the real magic is the processing.
"The reason these thin, quarter-inch panels don’t break is that
they are very flexible," Homchick says. "Flexible enough to be used on a moving
vessel."
After a block is selected, it’s squared off and cleaned up and
then put in an oven to bake out all the fissures. Next it’s put in an autoclave
and taken down about seven atmospheres, producing enormous pressure. Then the
entire block is infused with resin. High-tech epoxy and polyurethane-coated
substrate allow the boat to "twist" all it wants without impacting the floor.
For floor inlays, Homchick offers a wide variety of precious and semi-precious
stone besides marble: lapis, malachite, onyx, mother of pearl. Currently he’s
testing a petrified sequoia to see if his gang saws can possibly slice it.
François Zuretti arguably has the last word in palatial floors,
one that’s thematically out of this world. In the dining room of the third
Ambrosia, he created a space theme in passing reference to his client’s
aeronautical business. He composed the floor out of high-tech stainless steel
panels complete with small craters and re-created moon vehicle tire tracks. "The
only problem," says Zuretti, "was to hold back on the concept before it started
looking artificial, like a movie set."
Even those who own floating palaces with luxurious floors need occasional
reality checks. As Linda Varone points out, we need those floors to help us feel
psychologically grounded.
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