This article is part of our Design special section about water as a source of creativity.
In the middle of Milan Design Week last month, in the middle of the Bagni Misteriosi — a historic bathing complex in the Porta Romana neighborhood — the Italian luxury shipbuilder Azimut Yachts hosted an unusual exhibition. It was a celebration of the company’s latest offering: the Seadeck 6, which made its debut last year and features interiors by the design team of Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez.
Having been lowered into the facility by crane, the nearly 60-foot vessel was set afloat in an outdoor swimming pool. There it bobbed, traversed by hordes of well-coiffed guests while a concealed apparatus shrouded it in bursts of atmospheric steam. Surreal, elegant, not a little absurd, it was a scene straight out of Fellini, with overtones of Werner Herzog’s boat-hoisting epic “Fitzcarraldo.”
But the thing that made it most unusual? “Azimut wanted to make this the most sustainable boat on the market,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “We tried to do that.”
The ultimate playthings for the ultrawealthy, high-end pleasure craft would not seem optimal candidates for greening. Yet a growing number of manufacturers and designers are trying to change that, producing yachts both large and (comparatively) small assembled from fewer and less carbon-intensive materials, requiring a fraction of the power to run and drawing more of their energy from renewable sources.
In a peculiar twist for an industry uniquely exposed to supply-chain shocks and the vicissitudes of geopolitics (the loss of the once-lucrative Russian market continues to smart), global brand leaders appear to be making the move toward energy efficiency of their own accord, rather than in response to any explicit demand from their clientele.
