Leading yacht designer Tim Heywood has been announced as the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award in the BOAT Design & Innovation Awards 2021.
Armed with a degree in Industrial Design Engineering and hunting for a job in London, the young Tim Heywood was referred to a yacht design firm named Jon Bannenberg Ltd (JBL). Showing his technical drawings and a five-metre boat he had sketched the night before, he was hired on the spot. The year was 1972, and the rest has become part of the history of superyachts.
Until the early 1970s yachts were drawn by naval architects. Heywood quickly became part of a sea change when designers began styling yacht exteriors for owners who were seeking individualisation. It was an unimaginable trajectory from drawing the electrical scheme for a 21-metre to working alongside Bannenberg on 85-metre Nabila. Bannenberg assigned him the details and construction supervision of 67-metre Siran in 1992, and projects such as these reshaped expectations for luxury yachts.
Heywood’s 24-year tenure at JBL culminated in a 96-metre yacht called Limitless – a Bannenberg commission with Heywood as lead designer. Their amicable parting in 1996 left Heywood supervising the final design and build of Limitless as he formed THD studio with his partner and wife, Vanessa.
The first boats under his own banner were stunningly large – 115-metre Pelorus and 97-metre Carinthia VII. They shared a look that was to become pure Heywood. Until Perfect Prescription in 2003, he also designed interiors for his clients, but realising it was the shapes that made his heart beat faster, he has since styled decks and GAs exclusively.
In the mid-2000s Amels hired him to design a large yacht that could be built in series and started on spec. A 52-metre named Deniki became the cornerstone of the Limited Editions semi-custom program when she went to the slipway in 2007. Heywood has created seven models in the Limited Editions series totalling 46 boats to date.
Believing that owners would appreciate tenders that looked like their motherships with equal creature comforts, Heywood ventured into superyacht tenders with matched pairs for Cedar Sea II (1986), Stefaren (1989) and Siran (1992) while at JBL. But today’s custom luxury tender genre can be traced to four he designed with Gunnar Vikingur and Sam Sorgiovanni in 2003 for Pelorus. His tenders even grace yachts he did not design such as Flying Fox.
Including his projects at Bannenberg’s studio, Heywood has created 95 yachts – 20 under his banner alone are among the pantheon of stars in the Top 200. For defining spaces and shaping proportions that have elevated superyachts for nearly 50 years, Tim Heywood is the recipient of our 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Listen to legendary superyacht designer Tim Heywood discuss some of his best-known projects and why he likes to work alone in this week's BOAT Briefing podcast.
Listen on AppleListen on Spotify