Welcome to the special “20th Anniversary” section of Top Yacht Design. Here we present to you, day by day, the best stories, yachts, characters we have covered in these 20 years of Top Yacht Design, from 2006 to the present day.
Taken from Top Yacht Design no. 21/2021 pp. 63-72
Excellence, a high-tech masterpiece
Designed by Winch Design and built by Abeking & Rasmussen, this 80m is a high-tech masterpiece that breaks with the past to create a whole design language.
Excellence is an effortless encapsulation of a radically different approach that demands courage, huge technical ability, brilliant design skills and exceptional creative talent. Penned by Winch Design and built by Abeking & Rasmussen, she is more floating sculpture than 8om megayacht. To begin with, her exterior lines are a complete breakaway from conventional aesthetic and architectural canons with many elements driving that fact home. Her reverse bow is reminiscent of the beak of the American Bald Eagle and extends a good 10 metres out from the hull, requiring the development of a new anchor dropping and weighing system.
Much has been written on the advantage of this type of bow but Excellence’s particular configuration, which includes a bulb below the waterline to improve hydrodynamic efficiency, demanded extra research and several tank testing sessions. It was an engineering challenge that is mirrored by her superstructure. This is where the whole form/function theme is at its most sophisticated.
Glass was the starting point and dominates. Using so much of it posed significant construction difficulties, but all have been dealt with most ingeniously. One puzzle was how to combine the rigidity of the sheets of glass used with the flexibility of aluminium to guarantee the mirrored surface did not distort reflections. On paper that sounds simple enough but in Excellence’s case the sheets of glass used were five metres high and weighed 1.3 tonnes apiece. That was without even contemplating the insulation work required to avoid putting the air-conditioning system under too much pressure. The result was that each panel is actually made by three layers of double glazing with the mirrored finish layer encased behind the outermost one.
The stunning masterpiece that emerged from all that planning, however, puts the subject of building of a relationship with the surrounding environment, currently very much a focus in yacht design, centre stage. Excellence’s enormous swathes of glazing blur any barriers between interior and exterior and create a dialogue between the two. In fact, the enhanced sense of contact outside world raising the onboard experience to unprecedented new heights.
The pinnacle is the atrium, which rises up majestically through three decks to spectacular effect. The interiors themselves exude a sense of understated casual elegance created in part by a soft, light colour palette. The only concessions to anything more formal are references to Florida-style Art Deco and the world of classic sports cars, two of the owner’s great passions. The sofas in the sky lounge were inspired by Cadillac seats and also feature a car grillestyle motif at their ends. The car theme is picked up once again in the concentric motifs on the floor and ceiling of the same space – a reference to the white-wall tyres that were all the rage in the 195os. The double-stitched leather trim in the cabins is subtle bow to vintage steering wheels and bonnet straps. Excellence’s layout is a real first too.
The aft section of the main deck is dedicated to communal life and socialising with the sunken pool and swim-up bar facing the main saloon. The forward section houses six 25 sqm guest cabins, a home cinema theatre and a spa. The owner’s private quarters span an entire deck’s worth of space and is actually split between upper and sun decks. The cabin proper has astonishing 180° views and gorgeous Macassar ebony trim while Oliver Treutlein created the crocodile skin motif wool carpet on the floor. Speaking of which, there are no less than 30 different kinds of marble aboard Excellence, most notably yellow onyx, in addition to rare luxe woods such as tamo ash, rippled sycamore and Amboyna burr.
by Matteo Zaccagnino – Photo by Guillaume Plisson and Winch Media
