Young Designer of the Year Award Winners – Where Are They Now?

Winning the student category in the 2017 Young Designer of the Year Awards provided an immediate boost to Le Merdy’s career as he was offered a role with Silver Arrows Marine less than 24 hours after the prize giving ceremony. This placement has seen him work on the Mercedes-Benz designed Arrow 460-GT speedboat.

Le Merdy (pictured above at the Cannes Yachting Festival 2017) is currently undertaking a three-month internship with Oceanco — part of his prize — after which he will return to Silver Arrows Marine and continue to develop personal projects. Summing up the past ten months, he told Boat International: “All the hard working that went into my entry for the Young Designer of the Year award was worth it.”

The brief for the 2013 Young Designer of the Year competition called for a 65-metre motor yacht with long range capability specced for an avid car collector who eschewed formality and traditional expedition vessel styling. It was Italian architectural design graduate Stefano Inglese and his Granturismo design that triumphed over other entrants, particularly for its ‘masculine and stylishly edgy’ exterior design inspired by the GranTurismo sports cars.

After receiving his doctorate in architecture, Ingelese worked in London at an ‘archistar’ office before joining Studio Vafiadis, his family’s design firm, in Rome. Responsible for new concept development, Inglese and his team unveiled a Sport Oceanic line for Columbus Yachts and have a 70 metre project under construction at the builder’s yard in Naples.

As the talk of environmental responsibility reached a crescendo in 2009, the second annual Young Designer of the Year competition awarded German industrial design student Maila Speitkamp the coveted Neptune for her design, Draconis. This 43.6-metre luxury catamaran boasted not only a low carbon footprint, but innovative folding sail wings and the ability to transform into a motor yacht as well.

Draconis was the thesis project for Speitkamp’s studies in Industrial Design at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Upon graduation, Speitkamp became a freelance designer working on yacht projects and spent several years lecturing on yacht styling at her alma mater’s Institute of Ship Technology and Transport Systems department. Today, Speitkamp and her husband Adrian Thon run industrial design firm Thon Design, in Essen, Germany, which specialises in machinery and equipment, measuring devices, electro-mobility and smart home appliances, among other applications.