Interior design
Best-laid plans
Cruise ship design was developing at a steady pace before 2020: ships were being made more accommodating and effi cient, and amenities and new technologies were plentiful. In the age of Covid-19, however, how are architects and designers ensuring that vessels are ready for a new era? Will Moffi tt talks to David McCarthy, director of marine development at AD Associates, and Terry McGillicuddy, director of Richmond International, about what impact the pandemic will have on ship design.
or immediate proof that cruise vessels are intimately connected with the history of architecture and design, Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation is a good starting point. Completed in 1952, this social housing block in Marseille features a flat roof emulating a liner’s deck and a swimming pool. The building’s overarching structure was heavily inspired by the steam liners of the age. Writing in his 1923 book Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier called these vessels “a liberation from the cursed enslavement of the past”.
Like fellow modernists such as Alvar Aalto and Richard Neutra, he sought to birth functional structures with clean lines and light and airy interiors. If architecture was a machine, Le Corbusier said, it should be a clean one, designed to alleviate disease and encourage social harmony. It’s a mantra that is being revisited in earnest as Covid-19 continues to spread
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across the globe. To counter the virus, the general consensus is that architects and designers will need to rethink how buildings and public spaces can be altered or remodelled to make them safer and more hygienic. Cruise ship design is one area that has received its fair share of scrutiny from a design perspective after outbreaks on ships such as the Diamond Princess in March 2020 helped cement a damaging perception that such vessels are ‘petri dishes’ for the virus. In such extreme circumstances there is a tendency to push for radical change, but not all architects and cruise ship designers are endorsing that philosophy. “At the start of the pandemic there was a rush to say design is going to change out of all recognition. But the truth is that it’s not dramatically different,” says David McCarthy, marine director at AD Associates, a London- based experiential and spatial design agency founded by CEO Chris Finch. The admission comes with a
Best-laid plans F
World Cruise Industry Review /
www.worldcruiseindustryreview.com
Crystal Cruises
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