The difference between a Naval Architect and a Yacht Designer

nice question and because i don't know ether i'm getting in line of the question

maybe Lars can tell us as he is a yacht designer?

In the most general terms the architect is an engineer who works out the calculations and how to build the thing. The designer works out how it will look and if you can stand to live in it.

Lars can feel free to correct me
rude Kelly

NICE post Lars.

I'd like to add one thing... in addition to Yacht Designers and Naval Architects, there are also Hydrodynamic Engineers who contribute to hull designs and propulsion systems.

Carl: maybe you should open up a forum like faq or questions around yachting where all questions about yachting (like this one) which have been asked before can be posted - so everybody can take a look there for questions (maybe some more visitors on your page?)

Lars: do you have a NA in your studio (do you have a studio) or maybe you are a NA ?

yea - we see it in your designs

You now what a horse designed by a committee is..........................................A Camel

That's a VERY good idea Brunick! Let me give some thought to the format and I'll put this on the To-Do list.

*hehehe*

i guess your to-do list is getting very long

In the UK Naval architects are trained as Engineer Designers and are fully qualified to do Hydrodynamic calculations. Of course people do end up specialising, usually Surveyors in the UK, or Working in Offshore, however some do work as all round NAs designing, engineering all all, (albeit Fishing boats etc)

Let's have a look at the marine industry directories: In the section "Yacht Designers" you will find them all, stylists, architects and interior designers. In the section "Interior Designers" you'll find some exterior designers that also do the interiors, but almost no "real" interior designer, they all declared themselves already in the section "Yacht Designers". In the section "Naval Architects" instead you'll find a little bit of everything, but more naval architectcts will be declaring themselves in the "Yacht Designers" section as well. I'm talking about the tendency, there are bright exemptions. However, it seems that everybody is designing yachts...but let's give a closer look to this phenomenon:

The truth is that the "styling" and "design" are enjoying this "prestigious" image in the industry. From this point a little analisis here under was developed:

Yacht Designers do the design and style, concive yachts and are having fun with it. Designers rarely officially expose their ability to structuraly define their designs even when they are capable of it. So rarely, that no names come to my mind. It's a cherry on top of their service, but the design is the one that rules and gets all the credits, as Mr. Modin mentioned. Main names of pure exterior design are Francis and Francis, Heywood, Nattuci, Nuvolari & Lenard, Oino, Righini, also Mr. Modin...to name some.

Naval architects on the other side are frustrated because of this popularity and fame that Designers enjoy and are beliveing to be designers as well. Naval Architects often tend to underline that; that's why on all their sites you will find the "design and style" service as their main capability. Sometimes they convince clients in this myth and then you get what you get, technicaly quite solved but aesteticaly boring yachts. Main names would be Dick Boon, Buzzi, Tony Castro, Tom Fexas, Paolo Scanu, DeVoogt, and many more.

I would point out another involved group, interior designers. They have the same frustration problem as the naval architects, and almost all declare that they are capable to style the yachts exterior (and therefore being yacht designers) as well. The exterior look when they do it in their case is mostly a cheesy stuff with wrong proportions (simply they tend to favour interior spaces). Sometimes the result is better when they "have a guy" inside the studio that styles exteriors for them (if he's good, the result is good as well), but usualy and quite soon they loose him as he opens his own design studio taking with him some exterior style contracts (like in the case of Terence Disdale or Andrew Winch; BTW they are not "covered" right now as "the guys" just left). Main actors in this frustrated interior designers world are, besides already mentioned Disdale and Winch also Dickie "Jon" Banneberg, Glade Johnson, Evan K. Marshall, Starkey...to name a few.

All this above has of course nothing to do with the quality of their interior job, to be precise. They all make part the group with the "clean" interior designers, people that are masters of the interior decoration and push that skillness as their main service, like Pinto, Zurretti...

Note please, that all the names in this post are trying to follow an alphabetical order.

Wow, plenty of ammunition for a good food fight in that post Teenna!

It would be interesting to get a peek inside some of the major design offices to see just who ends up doing what. Or do they really not have a big enough staff for those games?

Kelly Cook

You wish!
Once we have a guns ready but nobody wants to fire them, hihi!

I've been trying to read up on the various Italian lines of production yachts. To my surprise quite a few of these were actually designed by Americans. Mostly it would seem lurking around Florida. Don't know whether they should be labeled architects or designers. But that "Italian style" ain't all Italian!

Kelly

I assume the bigger the project, the more both talents are needed? Which leads to an idle question: what is the largest yacht built by an architect only (no separate designer/stylist employed)? This is in regards to the exterior only, interior does not count.

Kelly

I would say that there are three categories of people calling themselves 'yacht designers':

a) yachts stylists with strong skills or degree in arts;
b) engineers involved in yacht design but not holding degree in naval architecture;
c) individuals with understanding/experience of boating and construction who claim they are designing boats. Some of them really do due to their enormous talent, but most of them just produce funny sketches

My understanding of naval architect profession is that we should put more stress on word 'architect' that assumes creative component.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply Eric. Since I haven't been around any NA offices I was not aware of the sharing of the design tasks between the NA offices and the shipyards.

Kelly

It's a pitty that after invested all that effort to present my overview of the design market today the post got lost in the Forum...