In an interview,super yacht designer Philippe Starck reveals he
has no phone or car, doesn’t know his alphabet, works all alone and is
“absolutely not happy”. Stewart Campbell meets the design genius behind
the world’s most famous superyacht,Motor Yacht A
.
But that, as it turns out, is way off. “Sometimes it only takes 30
seconds to make a design,” says the Frenchman in his heavily accented
English. “I think to myself ‘it is too easy, it cannot be possible’. But
90 per cent of my work is like this. I am a little ashamed. It’s not
normal.”
He attributes this ability to suddenly conjure designs to
an incredibly powerful subconscious, which he likens to a field of
magma flowing just beneath the surface of his conscious mind. When
working on a project — always alone and always in view of the sea —the
magma field will bubble a design, almost fully realised, into his head.
The agony of the struggle, the endless refinement… it’s all alien to
him. “People are always surprised when I say I can design something in
five minutes, but it’s true and it’s not a sketch — a sketch is
ridiculous.”
The design for what would
become the world’s most talked about superyacht bubbled into Starck’s
mind at his home in Burano, Venice, in 2004. There was no brief beyond
an idea of length and a demand for six cabins. “That was the beauty of
the project and the beauty and intelligence of the owner,” Starck says.
“He just left me completely free.”
Brave owner. By that point Starck had a sailing yacht, 24 metre
Virtuelle, under his belt and 65 metre
Feadship motor yacht
Wedge Too, which he took on halfway through its build, but nothing on the scale of
Motor Yacht A
– and nothing in his back catalogue remotely hinted at what he would
produce. “If I made it just like the other boats – why? Why spend this
money? I am always sad when people copy because they spend the money of
that client for nothing. We always have a duty to bring something new
and interesting to advance civilisation. When you copy, you regress.”
We
meet on board the boat in Abu Dhabi. He and his wife Jasmine have just
flown from Japan, pit-stopping here before heading on to Portugal, where
they keep a home – one of five across Europe – among the sand dunes in
the south of the country. Starck will spend a week, hermit-like, at his
desk, a pencil and sheets of A4 paper in front of him. The house (he
calls it a “cabana”) is basic: there’s no running water and they
generate their own electricity with solar panels. Nothing is allowed to
disturb his focus. Jasmine deals with all enquiries, of which there are
more than 50 per week, leaving Starck to his trance, and the view of his
beloved Atlantic Ocean. “I come from the sea,” he says. “My father had a
big wooden sailing boat and the best time in my life was when I would
go down and see it in the boatyard undergoing maintenance.”
He once described himself
as “amphibian” because as a child he was rarely off the water, racing
boats on the Seine and later teaching sea survival off the town of
Morlaix in Brittany, home to some of the world’s fiercest seas and the
battered lighthouses made famous by Philip Plisson. “I started at a very
serious, hard sailing school at the age of 14 or 15. Five or six years
later I became a teacher and it was my job to sink the boat and show the
students how to survive. That is where I started to love the sea, the
real sea, the rough sea — especially the Atlantic sea.”
It’s something that informs his boat designs to this day. Forward of the saloon on
Motor Yacht A
is the main outdoor lounging area, protected by a deck overhang, but
open to the elements from the bow. On other yachts this size, there
might be a modest seating area forward but most life on deck takes place
to the rear of the superstructure, out of the wind. “When I designed
this boat, no one was using the front, and I thought it was a fantastic
place because you have the sea and you’re out of the exhaust. But people
would say to me ‘but there is wind and there are waves’. Yes! That is
why we are on a boat. If you don’t want that, buy an apartment, build a
house. We want the wind, we want the waves, we want to see the sea. We
want to see the violence, the beauty of the sea, the majesty of the
sea.”
Starck still sails singlehanded in one of the 15 or more
boats he keeps dotted all over Europe. In truth he’s lost count of how
many he owns but none is bigger than 15 metres — small enough for him to
take out alone, which is the way he likes it. “I love big waves, cold
water, huge wind. I want waves in my face.” If he has a bad habit, it’s
building boats: he always has one in production and he’s got ideas for
the next 20 stored away. “Some are amphibious with wheels, some are
completely solar boats. I have fun with this,” he says.
His favourite space on board
Motor Yacht A is a monument to these smaller craft: the
tender garage.
It’s cathedral-like down here, a magnificent place of worship to the
runabouts that keep the business of the bigger boat running. “I love
this one,” he says, gesturing to the limo tender that we’re sadly not
allowed to splash. The sports tender gets wet instead and Starck
confidently takes the helm, manoeuvring the small boat around for the
photoshoot.
When the owner was presented with the designs for his
119 metre yacht in the middle of the last decade, it took him just 15
minutes to say yes. “It was very simple. We were just three people in
the room. I think he said ‘perfect’... or no, perhaps he said nothing.
He just took the model and we just did it, and didn’t change a thing.”
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