|
|
|
Designers are creating stunningly beautiful floors and setting the stage
for the grand drama of yachting.
by Louis Postel
photography by Neil Rabinowitz
|
10/01/2007
|
Somewhere off Sardinia, supermodel Naomi Campbell purportedly traipsed
across the floor of the 206-foot Force Blue. Barefoot, she may have
alighted on the circular parquet pattern designer Celeste Dell’Anna had
inserted there in a honey-hued oak.
"It’s especially magical when the sunset reflects on it," says
Dell’Anna.
 Force Blue’s parquet
floors aglow. Photograph by Marc Paris. (Click image to enlarge)
Campbell embodies the carefree, barefoot spirit of yachting,
its giddy freedom and exhilaration, all of which designers such as Dell’Anna,
Glade Johnson and François Zuretti find themselves supporting with ever more
detailed and luxurious flooring. One can imagine her with a pair of Manolo
Blahnik snakeskin pumps dangling from one hand.
When Dell’Anna designed the S/Y Mau Mau for Italian
helicopter magnate Corrado Agusta in 1982, it was considered a very big boat at
154 feet. Now, says the designer, 154 feet is small. "People will want to know
whose tender it is. Today we have floating palaces."
And, commensurately, that’s the challenge with yacht floors—how
to make them palatial as well. The cherry and walnut flooring with "small square
designs" that Dell’Anna used in the past now have been replaced by
waterjet-cut parquets and medallions, marble slabs with precious compass stone
inlays and luminous silk rugs woven in Nepal for the staterooms. Just to give
you an idea of the elaborate nature of these new types of flooring, consider the
first 20 feet of entry area as you enter the aft doors into the main salon of
the 226-foot Feadship Attessa: eight different marbles including a rare,
dark green "veinless" marble from Guatemala, a peachy breccia oniciata from
Italy, with the field in a gray and cream Botticino, and so on, all properly
book-matched so that the veins on all the marble slabs correspond exactly.
Top: Black carpet squares on Phoenix. Photograph by Stéphane Bravin. Bottom: This marble bath on Oasis evokes ancient Greece. Photograph by Klaus Jordan. (Click images to enlarge)
Ornamentation, it would seem, is a necessary thing. "Acres of
uninterrupted hardwood or marble is just too much," says Linda Varone, a
consultant and lecturer on design psychology at Harvard University and
elsewhere. "The medallions and starbursts anchor us and pull us together. We
also need differences in texture and color to create gathering points and conversational groupings. Floors are key to making us feel grounded, on land or
sea."
Designers also point out that the current enthusiasm for
ornamentation and luxurious materials on yacht floors serves another purpose as
well. No matter how palatial a yacht is in size, its ceiling height is
necessarily low, making it better to draw attention to the floor where there is
more room for expression. The nature of that expression is often in the mode of
"traditional with a twist": classic features and enrichments but lighter in
tone, cleaner in detail. As for wear and tear, with climate controls, refits
averaging every three years and most of the passengers padding around barefoot,
wear and tear is less of an issue than one might think.
Returning to the parquetry of Force Blue’s medium deck
salon, there’s certainly magic to what designer Dell’Anna created. The parquet
of distressed oak forms a stylized penumbra under an illuminated bluish ring in
the ceiling soffit. There’s a halo above, figuratively speaking, that’s
reflected in tiles of light on the floor. And it’s all fairly low key, but
nevertheless emotional and classic. And it’s even more heavenly when, as we said
in the beginning, an obliging sunset burnishes the oak still further.
"I don’t like any one thing to show off more than another,"
says Dell’Anna, referring to the symmetry between the parquet and the soffits
above it. "There should always be good balance. Proportion is the essence of
good architecture. If you do a nice proportion the result is guaranteed.
However, I can’t explain what it is and what it’s not."
|
|
|
|
|
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Email This
Printer Friendly Version
Reprints & Permissions
Most Popular Searches