Meet the 26 speakers at the 2016 Superyacht Design Symposium

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Form vs Function

Ilse Crawford is a designer, academic and creative director with a simple mission to put human needs and desires at the centre of all that she does. As founder of Studioilse, together with her multi-disciplinary, London-based team, she brings her philosophy to life. This means creating environments where humans feel comfortable; public spaces that make people feel at home and homes that are habitable and make sense for the people who live in them. It means designing furniture and products that support and enhance human behaviour and actions in everyday life. It means restoring the human balance in brands and businesses that have lost their way. As founder of the department of Man and Wellbeing at the Design Academy Eindhoven, her mission extends to nurturing a new generation of students to always question why and how their work improves the reality of life.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Is beauty a science or an art?

Terence Disdale Design is one of the world’s leading companies specialising in yacht design. The company employs a team of 15 and was formed in 1973.

Prior to this Terence Disdale worked as one of Jon Bannenberg’s two design assistants for a few years. His other experiences were in the hotel design industry and with shop fitting and joinery specialists.

In his forty years of experience Terence has participated in the design and construction of more than a hundred yachts including fifty of these above the category of 45 meters. Eighteen of his projects have been completed above the category of 60 meters & he is the holder of thirty international design awards for his projects, including their latest creation the 81 metre Kibo which won the 2015 Showboats Holistic Design Award.

In 2015 the 163 metre Eclipse was recognised by Boat International with the status of ‘Motor Yacht Of The Decade.’

His forte is in creating the total design concept of the yacht from the water line upward. The design team develops the complete deck by deck planning, the superstructure lines, design and detail as well as the complete and totally bespoke interior.

Occasionally they have been invited to work on the interior of private aircraft and the houses of various clients where they have carried out extensive architectural work, landscape design and interior design.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: What has a superyacht got in common with a warship? Why should we care?

Trained at the Central School of Art and Design,  Martin Francis worked as a cabinet maker before in 1967 starting working with Architect  Norman Foster on a wide range of projects including the glass wall of the Willis Faber and Dumas building in Ipswich. He was for many years a director of Foster associates in London and the managing director of Foster France, working on Stansted airport, the Tecno range of furniture and the Carre d’Art in Nimes.

In 1982 he joined Peter Rice in the creation of RFR, a Paris based engineering company where among other things he was responsible for assisting IM Pei in the design of the cable structure of the Louvre Pyramid using yacht rigging technology.

40 years ago he started his career as a yacht designer with a number of large sail boats. His first motor yacht was the iconic ECO (now called  Enigma) is now 25 years old and still does 35 knots. This was followed by a number of innovative vessels like Senses,  Golden Shadow, Sultan and the 118 meter Yacht ‘ A’ for which he was the Technical and Naval designer, a joint project with Phillippe Starck. He also was engaged by RCCL Celebrity Cruises to design the exterior of the Solstice class – a series of five 120,000 GRT Cruise Ships.

He was recently retained by Vitsoe to head the design tem of their new 2000m2 headquarters and production facility to be built in Leamington Spa UK.

His largest project to date was the new Lürssen built 124 meter  Golden Odyssey delivered October 2015.

An Italian architect with a degree in Construction Science from the University of Florence, Cristina Gherardi Benardeau, founder of Paris-based CG Design, has solid experience in the luxury world.

She began her career by conceiving all the Virgin Megastores and Kenzo stores in France, and several departmental stores for the Brunswig family in Switzerland. In1994 she joined LVMH as Director of Architecture for Christian Dior Couture developing luxury retail projects worldwide. Those years featured close collaboration with Jacques Grange and Peter Marino for a new architectural concept and the opening of flagship stores in Paris, New York, Geneva, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Next she created the first Giorgio Armani Interior Design Studio in New York, working closely with Mr. Armani designing private homes and residential real estate projects worldwide. At Armani Casa, she designed her first yacht, Odessa, a 53-meter Christensen that won the 2010 ShowBoats Design Award for Best Interior Design. The following year, she founded CG Design in part to respond to the request to design a second yacht for Odessa’s owner. Savannah, his 83.5 meter yacht Feadship, is a finalist for this year’s Design Awards. Meanwhile, residential projects for private clients as well as real estate development for Fendi continues in Dubai, Riyadh and Moscow.

She credits the luxury world and working in a varied cultural universe for her sophisticated design yet insists her firm’s primary aim is to conserve a very strong architectural approach.

“Our aesthetic is contemporary, however, each project is the result of thematic research based on the client’s expectations and taste, the site, and the cultural environment, bringing together the French art of living, Italian design and American functionality,” she says.

Monégasque Naval Architect Richard Hein has taken on many roles in the yachting world. He began his career opening a sales and design office in the US for Guy Couach and then moved to the then-largest US yacht builder Broward Marine as its in-house designer, where he was responsible for drawing the yards landmark 120-footers.

In 1984 he returned to his native Monaco and opened The A Group design studio where his yachts caught the attention of several European yards and led to him being tapped to help begin Oceanco and then serve as its chief designer and CEO for 12 years, during which time the yard delivered 18 yachts from 35 to 95 meters including the Stargate twins and Al-Mirqab, the biggest yachts ever built in The Netherlands to that time. A management buyout of Oceanco headed by Hein and backed by yacht owner Theodore Angelopoulos, took place in 2002 and in 2004, Hein stepped down as CEO turning sole ownership of the yard to Angelopoulos.

Augmenting his design studio, Hein established VegaYachts, a project development and management company focused on vessels in the 100-meter range. Its first project is the world’s first unrestricted PYC class yacht. The 101-meter IDynasty was launched at the Kusch Yachts shipyard in Germany during November 2014 and delivered successfully to her owner in July 2015. Various projects between 70 and 135 meters are currently in development at The A Group along with exclusive residential properties in The Bahamas.

“Thanks to our background as yacht builders, all our original and innovative designs incorporate construction knowledge, particularly the complex PYC,” says Hein.

“At The A group, we design to build.”

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Is the client always right?

Francesco Lovo, graduated in Aeronautical Engineering at the Politecnico of Turin in 1993, starts his career at Fiat Avio with particular assignments related to ESA programs for the development of new generation reusable space launchers and advanced ‘airbreathing’ hypersonic propulsion systems.

In 1997 he starts collaborating with Pininfarina Extra as Engineering Manager establishing a new CAD virtual modeling unit for industrial design projects.

From 1998 to 2001 he is responsible for business development while in 2002, he takes the responsibility of the creative, design and engineering management at Pininfarina Extra as R&D Director.

In 2005-2006, in the occasion of the Olympic Winter Games 2006 in Turin, he manages the whole research, development and manufacturing program for the Olympic torch, produced in 12.000 pieces by Pinnfarina SpA.

From 2007 to 2013 he manage the development program at Pininfarina Extra for the new passenger cabin interiors for Sukhoi Superjet-100 regional jet.

In the meantime he establish a new architectural-design division at Pininfarina Extra.

In the following years he manage the design development programs for superyachts projects collaborating with the selected shipyards and the end users.

In 2015 he take the responsibility of the whole operative activities relevant to the Pininfarina projects outside the automotive field as Pininfarina Extra Vice President Operations.

Up to now he has managed more than 400 different design projects in different design and industrial fields working with customers all around the world.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Is the client always right?

Peter Lürssen has been the managing partner of the Lürssen Shipyard since 1988‎, continuing the company's family-owned tradition in the fourth generation together with his cousin Friedrich Lürssen. A graduated naval architect, industrial engineer and having obtained an MBA from Cornell University, Peter Lürssen oversees all seven Lürssen shipyard locations in Northern Germany and is active in the operative business of yacht sales. Not only passionate about yachting and sailing, Lürssen has made the support of marine protection a priority in his charity work. He is a strong supporter of the Blue Marine Foundation, a marine conservancy successfully and efficiently campaigning for the set-up of Marine Protected Areas in the world's oceans, and he passionately spreads the word amongst clients and industry leaders.

‎In his free time, Peter Lürssen prioritizes spending time with his family, on sailing cruises or at home in Bremen.

James O'Callaghan is a structural engineer with more than 20 years of experience. Widely acknowledged as an authority on structural glass, he is perhaps best known for his highly innovative designs for glass stairs, bridges and other structural elements in Apple’s iconic retail stores around the world.

He co-founded engineering design firm Eckersley O'Callaghan with Brian Eckersley in 2004. The practice is based in London, with offices in New York, San Francisco, Paris and Shanghai.

His contribution to the Feadship Venus was instrumental in demonstrating and justifying that glazing of such a scale could be used in the marine environment. This landmark success has paved the way for his dedicated team of glass engineers to further support the industry in realising large-format glazing and striking glass features such as canopies, stairs or swimming pools in superyachts. The team provides technical design, detailing, and procurement expertise to deliver cutting-edge glass structures meeting classification regulations. O’Callaghan believes that collaboration and engagement are key to continuously redefine what is achievable in this ambitious market.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Form vs Function

Paul Priestman is a designer and Director of PriestmanGoode, the leading travel and transport design consultancy whose work ranges from aircraft interiors to hotels, high speed trains, private jets, commercial spacecraft and cruise ships.

Paul is known for creating luxurious passenger experiences in small spaces and has designed many award winning airline interiors, including First Class cabins for Qatar Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Air France, Swiss International Airlines and TAM Airlines among many others, as well as the new high speed trains in China.

Based in London and China, PriestmanGoode employs an international staff of over fifty people – from designers to visualisers and textile specialists – who excel at creative problem solving and continuously push the boundaries of travel and transport design.

Paul believes that design is not just about styling, but about making things better, both for passengers, as well as to manufacture, run and maintain. A well-known figure in the global design industry, he is regular speaker on the subject of design and its value to business. He is currently a trustee of the Design Council and earlier this year was voted one of London’s most influential people for the third consecutive year.

PLENARY SESSION SPEAKER: Superyacht Owner Panel

Dr. Alexander Rosa-Alscher studied “Business administration of structure” and “Building construction of architecture” in the cities of Regensburg, Munich, Berlin and Budapest.

Dr. Rosa-Alscher is the owner of the Rosa-Alscher Group, which formed in 2006. The Group achieves remarkable architecture under one brand and distributes all the real estate expertise among its independent companies. It enriches the creative processes with experience and quality.

Before placing the order for motor yacht Noga as a 100pz custom built vessel, Dr. Rosa-Alscher was the previous owner of five other super yachts.