There is one material that appears on no shipyard specification sheet, that has neither a specific weight nor a price per square metre, and yet defines every project bearing the Winch Design signature: light. At the London studio founded in 1986 by Andrew and Jane Winch, natural light is not a by-product of glazing but the very starting point of the design. It is around light that volumes, circulation, materials and proportions are organised. The result is an unmistakable signature: yachts that do not merely float upon the water, but seem to converse with it through reflections, transparencies and carefully calibrated shadow.
A School with Deep Roots
Andrew Winch trained under Jon Bannenberg, the designer who first treated the yacht as a work of total architecture rather than a mere vessel of prestige. From that apprenticeship Winch inherited a precise conviction: every space must produce an emotional response, not simply a visual one. The studio calls it the Winch Ethos – a philosophy that seeks to create balanced, luminous environments capable of lifting the spirits of those who inhabit them.
Forty years on, that specialist atelier for yacht interiors and exteriors has become one of the most influential design practices in the world: more than 150 designers, naval architects and 3D visualisers, with dedicated divisions for aviation, architecture and residential interiors. Yet the approach remains that of the early days – radically bespoke and entirely turn-key: the studio designs not only the hull and the living spaces, but goes so far as to select glassware, linens, artworks and wall coverings. Nothing is left to chance, because nothing must interrupt the coherence of the luminous narrative.
Glass as a Manifesto
If light is the material, glass is the instrument. The studio’s portfolio demonstrates this with an almost programmatic progression. Excellence, the 80-metre built by Abeking & Rasmussen and showered with awards by the international press, is defined by a volume of external glazing without precedent in her class: a mirrored bow that overturns the traditional grammar of the superyacht and transforms the superstructure into a floating lantern. Aboard Dilbar, the 156-metre Lürssen colossus that holds the world record for gross tonnage, the challenge was the opposite: bringing natural light deep into vast interior volumes, measuring it out as one would measure a precious material.
The most recent expression of this language is Fusion, the 88-metre concept developed with Feadship, where a glass funnel filled with greenery connects the decks vertically, turning an element that is opaque by definition into a light well inhabited by plants. It is the exact reversal of classical naval logic: what traditionally conceals, here reveals.
Flowform, an Ode to the Elements
The most complete manifesto of this poetics, however, is Flowform, the 35-metre sailing yacht concept unveiled at the 2025 Monaco Yacht Show together with Frers Design, author of the naval architecture. The interiors, by Winch, are declaredly an ode to the three natural elements of sailing: water, wind and light. The transparent deckhouse acts as a vast skylight flooding the main saloon, while glazed skylights grant those below deck a direct visual connection with the handling of the sails above. Even in the owner’s suite, a wave-inspired ceiling frames, through a skylight, a view of the mast and sails: light thus becomes storytelling, not mere illumination.
At the opposite end of the dimensional scale stands Project Sky, the 81-metre sloop developed with Malcolm McKeon Yacht Design and Royal Huisman, destined to carry the tallest mast in the world. Here too the interiors – serene and nature-inspired – are conceived for world cruising: an architecture designed to chase the light across every latitude.
From Sea to Land, and into the Sky
Winch Design’s luminous grammar knows no boundaries of element. At the Kuredhi Residence on Velaa Private Island, in the Maldives, the studio transposed its nautical language onto dry land: sea-inspired tones, natural materials and total continuity between indoors and outdoors, dissolving the threshold of the villa just as the boundary between deck and sea would dissolve. In private aviation, the refurbishment of a Bombardier Global 6000 proved that even a pressurised cabin at ten thousand metres can be treated as a landscape of natural textures and wave-inspired detailing.
And this is where the true lesson of the London studio is measured: light is not a resource to be found, but an architecture to be built. Whether it is a sail, a villa or a jet, Winch Design continues to demonstrate that the rarest luxury cannot be touched, nor bought by the square metre. It is something you pass through – as a ray of sunlight passes through a glass deckhouse.
