Once relegated to fashioning interiors, today’s leading designers are as intimately familiar with NASA-grade acoustic insulation as they are with Italian leather. As yachts increasingly have become techno-showpieces, the designers have enjoyed a meteoric rise in influence over the building process, often representing the owner with the shipyard.

“Yes, a yacht’s pedigree starts with its yard of origin,” says Jim Gilbert, editor-in-chief of ShowBoats International. “But it also extends to the design pedigree it may or may not have. Having Ron Holland or Glade Johnson design your boat will mean a lot more for its value than a no-name designer.”

Besides being responsible for the yacht’s interior, many designers now also design the yacht’s exterior for a consistent but unique look, which requires a rare marriage of left-brain logic and right-brain creativity, combined with the disposition of a bean counter. “The designer has to know all the technical and aesthetic details,” says Gilbert. “But he also has to work with the yard to make sure the boat is built on schedule.”

Gilbert says the price of an interior can add up to 35 percent of the total cost—compared to about 25 percent 20 years ago. Top designers command fees of up to $1 million for a 160-foot yacht. Gilbert notes that this can be money well spent. “These yachts usually take two or three years to build,” he says. “A good designer can save an owner time and money because he is often the point of contact between the owner and the shipyard and can make smart decisions, reigning in the owner when necessary. And certain designers’ names carry a lot of weight in the resale market.”

That was not always the case. Thirty years ago, yacht designers were viewed as little more than glorified interior decorators, earning much less respect—and fewer dollars—than the naval architects designing the hulls. “It was all about the naval architecture and the utilitarian arrangement of space,” says Gilbert. “On the exterior, you had a choice of teak or teak. The fabrics were navy blue or, if you really wanted to be daring, navy blue with white stripes. Nobody thought about the interiors. That was a question of filling in the space between the walls.”

Enter Jon Bannenberg, a designer who injected fresh air into the stodgy world of yachting of the ’60s and ’70s by breaking many of the established ground rules of design. “He figured if you’re spending huge amounts of money for a boat, it should make a statement,” says Gilbert. 

By the time of his death in 2002, Bannenberg and his Burnsall Street studio in London had completed four decades of making statements in the hundreds of yachts they created. Many, like Carinthia V, came to be seen as groundbreaking, floating sculptures; Bannenberg even designed the QE II. Yet, his studio never was pigeonholed into one style of design. That is partly because Bannenberg’s crew brimmed with diverse, creative talent like Donald Starkey, Terence Disdale, Andrew Winch and Tim Heywood, all of them considered among the crème de la crème of today’s yacht designers.

“We were very prolific,” says Heywood, whose most recent designs include the 377-foot Lürssen Pelorus (for which he shares design credit with Disdale) and the 177-foot Oceanfast Perfect Prescription. Heywood worked at the Bannenberg studio from 1972 until 1995, when he opened his own studio. He thinks Bannenberg’s group helped usher in what some are calling the golden era of yacht design. “They were great years. We were at the forefront of what was happening,” he says. “But I think the last eight years have seen an even greater impact of the yacht designer.”

Matters of Size
This impact lies, in part, with the increasing demand for supersized superyachts like Pelorus. “People are getting more comfortable with the idea of a yacht 300 or 400 feet long, and realizing the longer it is, the more elegant it can be,” says Heywood. “You can hear them saying: ‘In 1923 the New York Yacht Club had 200 yachts over 300 feet. We can do it again.’”

Perhaps, but the rules have changed dramatically over the last two decades. “Comparing a yacht of 15 years ago to today is like comparing a commercial airliner to the space shuttle,” says Gilbert. “They’re light-years ahead of where they were. Behind the walls are hundreds of miles of cable that connect the electrical systems, computer servers and communications networks.” Throw in the ventilation and high-tech soundproofing systems—all in a narrow space that must function seamlessly and look strikingly beautiful to the eye—and you create a tight-fitting jigsaw puzzle that would drive most nonyachting interior designers to distraction.

Paul Johnson has seen firsthand the challenges over the years. The owner’s project manager for Mirabella V (at 247 feet long, it will be the world’s largest single-masted sailboat when launched this spring), Johnson insists that the need for the design firm to produce the most technically accurate information available has become critical. “Twenty years ago, we’d wing it a bit on a 100-foot yacht,” says Johnson. “Now, if you don’t get everything spot-on, someone will come after you with a lawsuit.”

Of course, one can carry that too far. Johnson said that he recently had to keep Vosper Thornycroft, Mirabella’s yard in the United Kingdom, from adding  tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of the project. “They wanted to achieve the precise sound level we’d stipulated, and were going to add another half-ton of sound-deadening material,” he says. “It was off by only one decibel. We told them to forget it, but those are the kinds of contracts everyone is used to now.”

Joe Vittoria, Mirabella’s owner, realized early on that the success or failure of this project would be in its fine details, and needed the right designer. He turned to Ron Holland, a onetime ocean-racing sailor who has made his reputation designing large sailing yachts for 30 years from his studio in Kinsale, Ireland. His latest project was Felicita West. The 210-footer, built by Italy’s Perini Navi, was the first sailboat ever certified for over 550 tons by the Maritime Coastal Agency (MCA), the U.K. agency that regulates most large charter yachts. Mirabella V is the second.

Both had to meet regulations designed for cruise ships, not yachts, and still perform like a sailboat, creating a technical conundrum. Mirabella V, for instance, would eventually weigh in at a mammoth 827 tons, and its topside rigging, laid end to end, would span four miles. Vittoria had ambitious plans for her: He not only needed a comfortable cruising vessel, he wanted to race Mirabella V. Would it come to resemble a souped-up Winnebago?

Holland’s design is anything but; it is a sleek, low-profile and elegant sailing yacht. “The size often meant going back to the drawing board, working with first principles,” says Holland. “It was technically quite challenging, figuring the loads and strengths.” Despite that, he predicts the yacht will reach 23 mph under sail—5 mph faster than with her engines. Another innovation: When at anchor, the two recesses on the foredeck, where the tenders are normally stowed, will convert into a 20-person Jacuzzi and a wading pool.

Holland also had another challenge—the three-level interior of the yacht. Known for his hulls and topsides, he worked closely with the Vittorias on the interior layout, hemmed in by the demands of a performance sailboat and strict MCA code. “The interior is outstanding,” says Paul Johnson. “This will put him in the same class as many interior designers.”

Holland collaborated with Dan Lenard of Venice’s Nuvolari & Lenard on Felicita West, with Lenard designing the interior. (It is not uncommon for designers to team up on specific projects, depending on their expertise. Andrew Winch, for instance, designer of the Feadship Solemates and Cakewalk, among many others, has worked with other designers and naval architects on many projects.) Lenard had the distinction of being the first outside designer Perini Navi used, and he has raised his reputation a notch or two by designing the complete package of CRN’s 141-foot Magnifica, the first of that company’s three-yacht series. “Nobody would build a single custom yacht like this because there is so much exterior detailing,” he said. “But with a series, you take much of the cost out of the detailing and the boats get better as each one is built.”

A few designers, such as Lenard and Francois Zuretti, have also designed a semicustom series of yachts (Zuretti for Benetti and Lenard for Carver); as ShowBoats’ Gilbert observes, this adds to an owner’s bragging rights while keeping the costs down. “It’s like Karman Ghia did with Volkswagen, but we’re talking about dozens of units instead of thousands,” he says. Still, to see Lenard’s name on a traditionally American production yacht like the Carver Marquis 59 shows the international reach of the most sought-after designers.

American designer Glade Johnson is no stranger to the European yards. Johnson is considered one of the most successful U.S. designers, having produced a string of noteworthy designs that span from his first yacht, the 127-foot Feadship Excellence I, back in the late ’80s, to last year’s launch of Capri, the 192-foot Lürssen.

Johnson says that bringing the Capri into being required three years and thousands of hours on the part of his firm. He worked for about six months with the owner to develop the general concept of the boat before sending the plans out to the shipyards for bidding. Another 32 months of build time then began, with Johnson shuttling back and forth between his office outside Seattle and the yard in Germany to make certain the yacht remained on schedule.

Fitting Features
Johnson likens the design process of any yacht, at least in its initial phase, to a jigsaw puzzle. “You start by boiling down what the owners want from the boat,” he says. “In Capri, for instance, they wanted features like a full gym, a soundproof room where the husband could play his electric guitar as loud as he wanted, and a stateroom for children or guests.”

The owner of the recently launched Flamingo Daze, a Johnson-designed 151-foot Hakvoort, says he admired  Johnson’s attention to detail. “Glade gets down to every curve and radius on the boat,” he recalls.  A first-time boat buyer, the owner also appreciated the soft-sell approach. “He [Johnson] is an excellent listener and didn’t bring any concepts to that first meeting. He had no agenda. He met us at our house, paid attention to the kind of people we are, and just listened. He kept us involved every step of the way.”

What could have been a knuckle-biting three years, the owner adds, was a lot of fun. At the end of the process, he also enjoyed the added financial perk of dropping Johnson’s name: “His name on the yacht will raise her value when we go to charter her. Yachts this size charter for $110,000 to $185,000 per week. I think we’ll see the higher end.” 

“There’s no question that a good designer’s name on a yacht increases its value,” says William Smith of Trinity Yachts in New Orleans. “That’s why we have worked with Dee Robinson over the past 10 years.”

Robinson, a 25-year veteran based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has designed the interiors of virtually every Trinity to come off the line—including its first yacht, the 150-foot Victory Lane, launched in 1993, and most recently the 142-foot Chevy Toy. “Everyone thinks we’re tied into Dee,” says Smith. “But we’re not. She’s hired by the owners. She gets tremendous repeat business because she’s very good about figuring out and delivering what they want.”
Robinson’s first yacht project, in the 1970s, was for Evel Knievel, on his Feadship, Evel Eye. Robinson marvels at how far technical yacht design has become since designing Evel Eye. “I don’t tell my clients this when I’m starting a design,” she says, “but I couldn’t care less what colors they like. I’m dealing with massive space, lighting and structural problems. You should see the amount of technical drawings to enclose, hide and disguise the yacht’s systems. It takes a lot of forethought to get that ‘tah-dah!’ look.”

Robinson works with numerous builders other than Trinity, and besides Chevy Toy, designed the interior of a 170-foot yacht recently completed in Hong Kong. She does not believe being a woman is a handicap in a design world dominated by men. “After 25 years, I think my work speaks for itself,” she says. “I’m even breaking the glass ceiling in the Persian Gulf, with two Arab clients.”

One bellwether firm has ignored the trend in naming “star” designers, but still attracts its share of new projects. Sparkman & Stephens, now in its 75th year, is considered the oldest yacht design firm in the country, with perhaps the richest heritage. But the company regards itself as a naval architecture firm that designs yachts without sacrificing one element to the other. “Our company is licensed for marine engineering, so we can do the total package,” says Mitchell Gibbons-Neff, president.

The firm, founded by legendary yacht designer Olin Stephens, has created more than 2,800 new designs since 1929, including multiple America’s Cup champions and the famous World War II amphibious DUKW (Duck) trucks.

Sparkman & Stephens is still on the cutting edge of sailboat designs, and its recent motoryacht launches include the Anson Bell, a 156-foot Palmer Johnson. As with the other designers mentioned here, having the S&S name on the boat enhances the value, but in contrast to the individual designers, no one person at the firm gets sole credit. “We use a team effort here, just like when Olin Stephens was in charge,” explains Gibbons-Neff. But he also knows the value of the S&S name. “I’m a believer in pedigree. If you’ve never heard of the builder or designer, when it comes time to sell,” he says, “you just won’t get the same money for it.”

The Dream Team:
The world’s top designers and a sampling of their yachts.

Designer: Jonathan Barrett
Studio location: Seattle, Wash.
Design credits: 410-ft. Octopus, 115-ft. Scorpio, 124-ft. Aerie

Designer: Claudette Bonville    
Studio location: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Design credits: 172-ft. Sea Hawk, 145-ft. Starship, 147-ft.
Silver Fox

Designer: Terry Disdale
Studio location: Surrey, England
Design credits: 459-ft. Al Salamah, 253-ft. Montkaj, 377-ft.
 Pelorus, 154-ft. Sussurro

Designer: Tim Heywood
Studio location: London, England
Design credits: 377-ft. Pelorus, 174-ft. Perfect Prescription,
 321-ft. Carinthia VII

Designer: Ron Holland
Studio location: Kinsale, Ireland
Design credits: 151-ft. Affinity, 247-ft. Mirabella V, 210-ft.
 Felicita West

Designer: Glade Johnson
Studio location: Bellevue, Wash.
Design credits: 159-ft. Georgia, 192-ft. Capri, 139-ft.
Andiamo

Designer: Dan Lenard
Studio location: Venice, Italy
Design credits: 210-ft. Felicita West, 193-ft. Baronessa, 150-ft.
Kooilust Mare

Designer: John Munford
Studio location: Southampton, England
Design credits: 149-ft. KIV, 151-ft. Northern Light, 226-ft.
Reverie

Designer: Dee Robinson
Studio location: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Design credits: 142-ft. Chevy Toy, 124-ft. Anjilis, 103-ft.
 My Way

Designer: Donald Starkey
Studio location: London, England
Design credits: 157-ft. Aria, 188-ft. Excellence III, 126-ft. SQN

Designer: Andrew Winch
Studio location: London, England
Design credits: 170-ft. Solemates, 203-ft. Cakewalk,
161-ft. Bermie