Marine Design, 14-15 September 2011, Coventry University, UK
without respect to centuries of art of naval architecture and seagoing experience. Accommodations are also affected by cultural differences in different countries.
6. AESTHETICS OF SMALL CRAFT
Aesthetics in boat design is a category of emotional comprehension applied to appearance of a utilitarian object – a boat
in general or its particular details.
Judgment of aesthetics can hardly be formalized; it is variational and is based on psychological and cultural factors.
General aesthetics of boat can be characterized by:
Style - visual appearance that relates boat to certain period, school, location, shapes, etc.;
Architectural type – a collective set of boat features describing its layout and functions.
Proportions – relations between elements and the whole
of dimensions.
Other factors affecting the appearance are decor as a combination of objects and fashion pieces used to improve the aesthetical appeal; color and graphics, surface finishing contributing to the appearance and the feeling of quality, etc.
We can define three levels of comprehension of boat and yacht:
Distant – comprehension at a distance greater than boat length, i.e. looking from shore. This type is mostly
defining main projection.
characterized by the silhouette of craft proportions
Close – comprehension of shapes at close distance (say, from dock in marina) where pleasance and quality of surfaces and smoothness of lines are evaluated from different viewpoints with a strong perspective.
Detailed – shape details of fillets, protrusions, coamings, integration of elements and such details as ladders, swimming platforms, rubrails, integration of deck equipment into craft shapes, surface finish, etc.
in almost parallel design such as visual masses and
This is also level comprehension for small craft interiors.
Levels of comprehensions require different attitudes to design of aesthetical features. The silhouette might look great but the surfaces could be boring and flat in closer view. The silhouette is easy to compose and evaluate on paper;
modeling or physical scale or full-size models. Even 3D modeling won’t
for close range level one needs to apply 3D solve the problem as human
comprehension of small objects on a computer screen and full-size objects on real boats are different. Here some designer tricks are used obtained through the experience of building and watching their creations; one of those is to give some slight curvature and softness to all lines and surfaces even if those should look straight from original design idea.
Another important factor for the designer is to imagine how surfaces would look once built and after use. Boats tend to experience some deformations and buckling caused by sea loads and mooring, welding stress and laminate stress, cycled thermal shrinking and expansion caused by heating of exterior surfaces, etc. All these factors would cause some surface defects that would be clearly visible at close range especially on dark hulls and flat surfaces. So general advice is to avoid big flat surfaces that will potentially decrease the appearance; decorative chines and corrugations could be used to split such surfaces.
6.1 STYLES
There are plenty of styles and fashions in boat design so all-embracing classification and description of those would
hardly be possible. But generally, we can distinguish three main trends in today’s boat styling.
Classic trend gives preference to traditional shapes and solutions of the past 30…50 years; these could be boats built to old designs (including so-called ‘replicas’) or new designs that use classic elements. One of the great advantages of classic-styled boats is that they never get out of fashion and have higher resale value on secondary market compared to break-through contemporary ones. Another advantage of classics could be a better use of areas due to more ‘square’ shapes.
Figure 4 – Styles of boats: classic, contemporary, practical
©2012: The Royal Institution of Naval Architects
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