Architectural. Unconventional. Tailored. The terms architect Gian Marco Campanino, who penned the exteriors of Life Saga, uses to sum up the latest creation from Admiral Yachts.
Launched just last June, Life Saga is a steel and aluminium 65m with a beam of 10.6. She also caused quite a stir at the 2019 Monaco Yacht Show, thanks to a seductive profile and a layout brimming with novelty both inside and out.
Gian Marco Campanino cites Life Saga’s architecture as an example: “Her flanks have a central scoop that goes from the main deck to the upper deck with large swathes of glazing on both decks”.
The scoop on the main deck incorporates two fold-out balconies which extend the interiors. The glazing actually slides out directly from the sole. This create a sense of continuity between interior and exterior in the most exhilarating and emotive manner.
Another continuity-related aspect that characterises Life Saga’s deck is her main deck. “We named it the Sea Deck with the owner,” continues Campanino. “It is one single environment: from the cockpit to the lounge with the seafront balconies, from the sun pads aft for the bar area, the games room to the lounge, there is what I would call the open-plan arrangement of a modern villa.
An innovative interpretation of the classic succession of spaces separated by doors and other barriers: cockpit, entrance, saloon. In this case there are no barriers to foster a sort of interior-exterior hybridisation”.
A lucky encounter between the yard, which was already researching a series of interlinked spaces, and an owner that wanted to transfer the open layout of one of his support vessels to his new luxury yacht, produced Life Saga.
The owner’s “open” vision also provided plenty of stimulus for the interior design. “At our first meeting, the owner told me to think of the interiors as a cappuccino,” smiles Mark Berryman of Mark Berryman Design. “So I was to put a little more milk in some areas and a little less in others. He also said if a fabric sample felt soft and comfortable when you rubbed it on your cheek, it was good enough for his yacht”.
These quirky instructions yielded a design and a colour and materials palette that span bamboo – albeit once again reinterpreted to suit the owner’s tastes – and leather paired with natural oak, walnut and teak, all brushed and sanded to bring out their grains.
Choices that, as Berryman explains, “were made to give a sense of continuity right throughout the yacht so that guests could flow uninterrupted from one space to the next”.
These underlying themes are flanked too by other clever touches such as crackle effect on the corridor walls and Japanese design references, particularly the circular motif, which symbolises security, and recurs both inside and out.
Berryman also introduced some designer pieces such as the Macassar ebony Fletcher table in the dining area on the upper deck, and the custom tables made, like the rest of the bespoke features, by Celi 1920.
Berryman says the idea was “to create the idea of a home from home”. Alongside, adds Gian Marco Campanino, “an unconventional but not eccentric design which, with its open-plan arrangement and mixing of interiors and exteriors, expresses a function that can be shared by other owners seeking a new way of living the sea by venturing beyond the classic yacht layout”.