Blohm+Voss Magazine Issue 3 9/2016 by Blohm+Voss Germany

EXPLORATION | INNOVATION | ENGINEERING | CRAFTSMANSHIP

Oxidane Three artists’ work evoke a breathtaking consideration of our relationship with the sea

Techstyle How hackers are working with fashion designers to invent the future of clothing

Clearly Genius Glass engineering impresario James O’Callaghan explains how the future is transparent

No. 3

Introduction

Every year the world shows us how it can reinvent itself. In this, our third annual journal, we consider invention and reinvention through the stories of remarkable people doing remarkable things. One person who inspired us was Zaha Hadid, whom we had the honour to work closely with and whose understanding of form and function was that of an ingenious artist and engineer. Her recent passing is a huge loss, though her exuberance and passion for creative thinking will continue to excite the world through her art and architecture. Incredible people motivate us to look beyond the boundaries of conventional thought. They truly believe that only ‘the best’ will do, realising that ‘the best’ requires dedication, application, intelligence and skill, along with many years of hard work. They spur us on to seek smarter solutions, improved engineering, more efficient processes and new construction techniques. All of this is ultimately to delight our customers. Further evidence of our strong client focus is the opening of our first Mediterranean facility in La Ciotat, France to service and refit yachts up to 200m in length. Our drive to achieve amazing things also inspires us to build better yachts. Some might even say ‘the best’ yachts. In a world that seems increasingly obsessed with the superficial, the temporary and the meretricious, we choose to recognise the achievements of extraordinary people. The thinkers, the explorers, the researchers and the craftsmen.

Fred van Beers, CEO, Blohm+Voss

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This journal is dedicated to them. We celebrate the accomplishments of remarkable people. At Blohm+Voss, these are the people we admire. We hope you enjoy reading their stories.

Blohm+Voss Published by The Superyacht Agency thesuperyachtagency.com Editor: Don Hoyt Gorman Designer: Susana Ríos González Printed in the UK by Park Communications Many thanks to all of our contributors: Julian Bohne, Pierre Bouras, Carol Bruton, Edwin Cartlidge, Paul Colley, Amanda Cosco, Quincy Dein, Ben Findlay, Jim Gaunt & Kiteworld magazine, Kelly Hofer, Ido Lechner, NL Architects, Guillaume Plisson, Justin Poulsen, Astor Milan Salcedo, Studio XO, Jason deCaires Taylor, Tim Thomas, Richard Unwin, Kevin Wolf. OXIDANE: Please visit the artists’ websites to enquire about purchasing works, prints and maquettes. © Copyright Blohm+Voss 2016 All rights reserved

Contents

06 B+V News 85 B+V Society

08 Building Skyward As the world builds into the heavens through feats of engineering, the challenge of moving people has inspired new solutions to one of modernity’s original inventions: elevators.

16 Techstyle How teams of creative technologists are teaming up with fashion designers to invent the future of clothing.

40 Oxidane Three artists’ work evoke a breathtaking consideration of our relationship with the sea: Astor Milan Salcedo in Hamburg, Jason deCaires Taylor in Lanzarote and Carol Bruton in Monaco. 41 Into the Blue: Ascension Blue Marine Foundation has helped secure a huge no-fish protected zone around the remote South Atlantic island of Ascension. One marine photojournalist recently visited the waters and reports back on the natural bounty there and the efforts underway.

56 The Legend of Steinway If classical music had a soul, some might argue, then at least part of it would reside in the northern German port of Hamburg. It’s where the renowned instrument manufacturer Steinway & Sons makes its legendary pianos and grand pianos.

68 A new twist on nuclear power An unusual fusion reactor starting up in northern Germany might yield tomorrow’s ultimate energy source. 72 Clearly Genius Glass engineering impresario James O’Callaghan of Londonbased studio Eckersley O’Callaghan reveals how a radical idea, supported by an innovative company, has transformed architecture and is now changing the design of luxury yachts.

82 Photoshoot: ECO Built by Blohm+Voss, one of the most iconic yachts of all time celebrates her twenty-fifth year since launch in 1991.

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26 Harnessing Nature Kitesurfing is really just an evolved form of sailing. It’s all about trim: handling the gear enables tremendous synergy between the kitesurfer and the wind. It’s an art, and like sailing, once its mastered, the thrill gets under your skin.

48 Touching the Future Boasting 8,000 materials, Material ConneXion’s global network of libraries is helping to change the way designers from industries as diverse as automotive and fashion approach product design. But the innovations don’t stop there.

B+V News

Blohm+Voss La Ciotat about to come on-line for superyacht refit La Ciotat, France

“With our new office in Monaco and this central location in the Mediterranean we are moving our core business closer to our customers; we are now offering more flexibility and tailored life-cycle-services,” said Fred van Beers, Blohm+Voss Chief Executive Officer.

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In July, Blohm+Voss announced that it had won the tender for the set-up of a new maintenance and refit facility for megayachts in La Ciotat, in the South of France. The company will partner with La Ciotat Shipyards, managed by SEMIDEP-Ciotat, which is providing a large dry-dock and neighbouring workshop premises embedded within the existing shipyard. This new facility in the heart of the Mediterranean will serve to maintain and service megayachts over 80 metres in length. Operation is planned to start in November 2016.

The dock in La Ciotat is 200 metres long and 60 metres wide. Blohm+Voss customers now have the choice of utilising the company’s extensive shipyard facilities in Hamburg or the new base in La Ciotat for large yacht maintenance, refits or conversions. “Whatever our customers require: we will provide our renowned, exceptionally high quality standards and on-time services at both sites,” van Beers said.

Reduced costs and delivery time, and maximum flexibility drive BV80 development Hamburg, Germany

Blohm+Voss has continued the development of its revolutionary BV80 superyacht platform, which reduces costs to the client while lowering time to delivery and without losing the ability to customize the design and feel of the all-important owner and guest areas aboard. “Our customers and the yachts we've built have always been totally unique and continue to be so,” explained Patrick Coote, Managing Director, Monaco for Blohm+Voss. “Our market research has shown

that there is a steadily growing interest in technical platforms which reduce both price of and time to delivery whilst retaining maximum flexibility.” Coote has reinforced Blohm+Voss’ commitment to the BV80 project, with its sleek contemporary styling from Eidsgaard Design and advanced German engineering from the 100-year old shipbuilding pioneers. “We are seeing increasing enquiries every month,” says Coote. Blohm+Voss is positioned to deliver its first BV80 with a fully custom interior design in just 30 months from order. “This timeline is very exciting: It means a customized 80m superyacht can be available for delivery in just over two years with an interior that is perfectly in line with the client's preferences.”

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Building Skyward

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By Ido Lechner

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Innovation + Engineering

As the world builds into the heavens through feats of engineering, the challenge of moving people has inspired new solutions to one of urban society’s original inventions: elevators.

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Building skyward has enabled mankind to transcend the issue of the shrinking availability of space due to overpopulation. Such structures trademark the intensive use of urban land, which is generally accompanied by economic growth and overall prosperity. But the proliferation of high-rises comes with its own set of issues, chiefly long waiting times for elevators—which jam on occasion—and poor safety measures during lift emergencies. As the ever-growing population and advanced materials give rise to taller edifices, these complications could worsen.

Opening pages: A concept proposal for Taipei Performing Arts Center that deploys innovative elevator systems. NL Architects Above: The MULTI elevator, showing the cabin (black) with its innovative turning track system (silver).

Lance is a business professional running late to a meeting in one such building, located in the heart of Manhattan, where his team grows increasingly frustrated by his absence. As a key player in his enterprise, he represents an essential component in signing a contract with his corporation’s partners, and his tardiness proves detrimental to the slowly ripening relationship. Being that both firms are of great importance, the deal is set to take place on the top floor as a token of significance. Of course, as he makes his way in to the elevator and presses 60, he shoots up maybe ten flights before coming to a spontaneous standstill. Lance is stuck, just two minutes from signing the deal of his life. For over 160 years, elevators haven’t seen any significant evolution in the way they operate— think single shaft and a rope and pulley system. Of course, there’s the twin elevator which introduces a second elevator in the same shaft, or KONE’s UltraRope technology made of carbon fibre and a special high-friction coating for a more enduring build, but the general design remains unimaginatively consistent.

Below: MULTI, the world’s first rope-free elevator, heralds a new era of mobility in buildings.

And though these inching enhancements have ascended us to otherwise inconceivable heights, they’ve also limited the way we construct our buildings. How many elevators will a 100-floor building need to efficiently service everyone in it? How much space within the structure will housing so many elevators require? Perhaps, in a not-too-distant future, the current model will be due for an upgrade. Germany-based ThyssenKrupp argue that sometimes the greatest innovations aren’t the ones that build on top of the status quo, but shift sideways. The multinational conglomerate’s MULTI elevator, characterized by a rope-free, magnetic suspension system and the ability to move vertically and horizontally, offers riders an accelerated lift from the ground floor to the roof deck. Moreover,

B+V = forward thinking

the shafts in which the elevators travel will be able to house more than one cabin at a time, which circulate in a looped fashion similar to the way trains operate. As current escalator-elevator footprints can occupy up to 40% of a building’s floor space, the MULTI system is a space saving alternative that opens possibilities to novel and complex architectures. As Lance awaits the repairmen to release him from his claustrophobic situation, he tries phoning his team to no avail. With no mobile signal, the only thing he can do is calm his nerves as the technician makes his way downtown for what seems like an eternity.

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This page: Rottweilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elegant elevator Test Tower is 246m high and will have a public viewing area.

represents a proud moment in our history of presenting cutting-edge transport technologies that best serve current mobility needs.”

Now, let’s imagine things played out in the exact same way for our friend Lance, only that the facility was equipped with the brand new MULTI system… …As he gets in to the elevator and presses 60, he shoots up maybe ten flights before coming to a spontaneous standstill. Lance is stuck, just two minutes from signing the deal of his life. Surprised yet composed, he hits the emergency button, and within 15 to 30 seconds, another car ‘floats’ to his location, attaches to his cabin and completes the journey to the top floor where his team, partners and contract await.

If all goes well, perhaps Lance’s travels to the Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower, One World Trade Center and the CTF Finance Center will welcome him with MULTI’s of their own. According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, cities will need to construct floor space equivalent to 85 percent of the entirety of today’s residential and commercial building stock by 2025, making this one of the paramount challenges of our time. The MULTI system aims to free up enough space to help solve the challenge while further innovation will fill the gap so that Lance and his colleagues will keep looking skyward with confidence for the foreseeable future.

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“Every year, New York City office workers spend a cumulative amount of 16.6 years waiting for elevators, and 5.9 years actually inside them. This data illustrates how imperative it is to increase the availability of elevators,” says Andreas Schierenback, CEO of ThyssenKrupp. “As the nature of building constructions evolve, it is also necessary to adapt elevator systems to better suit the requirements of buildings and high volumes of passengers. From the one dimensional vertical arrangement to a two dimensional horizontal/vertical arrangement with more than one or two cabins operating in each shaft, MULTI

The Rottweil Test Tower, which stands at an impressive 246m, is the world’s tallest elevator tower, and will be the first outfitted with the MULTI system. Its completion is imminent. Boasting Germany’s highest observation deck, it’s here that the developers will examine the framework’s performance. If each of the twelve elevators’ connecting channels can withstand the resonance of the blowing winds in the small town’s empty airspace, then the MULTI will surely prove operational in a city environment. Other tested variables include the safety of travelling at speeds in excess of 60 kilometres per hour, efficiency of the built-in brakes and the seamlessness at which the cars are able to transition between shafts.

P O U R L E C H A M PA G N E

www.puiforcat.com

The collection of champagne accessories and its sterling silver beaker, a unique tasting tool, celebrate the art of fine taste and offer champagne experts and ardent aesthetes an entirely new tasting experience.

A family cutler founded in 1820, Puiforcat began to turn to silversmithing in the late nineteenth century, recreating classic masterpieces. Today, relying on its rich history and the exceptional savoir-faire of its master craftsmen, the House of Puiforcat sets the standard for an art de vivre that harmoniously combines silversmithing tradition with contemporary uses. With â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pour le champagneâ&#x20AC;?, Puiforcat boldly transforms the tumbler, one of the many precious objects that master silversmiths have skillfully molded over the centuries, into a unique champagne tasting instrument. The celebration promises to be lively and long-lasting whether in its original silver polished finish or in a yellow or a rose gold immersion that gives a warm feminine shine to the original piece. A hand-blown crystal dagger, a bucket, a champagne stopper and various serving accessories complement these expert vessels, celebrating together the ritual of champagne.

Techstyle Innovation + Craftsmanship

How teams of technologists are teaming up with fashion designers to invent the future of clothing.

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By Amanda Cosco

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Opening pages: Digital kimonos by Erina Kashihara respond to motion sensors in the fans. Photo: Kelly Hofer Left: Amanda Cosco, founder of Electric Runway, dedicated to discovering and reporting on fashion technology.

Our ever greater intimacy with technology became a focus for me as a freelance journalist two-and-a-half years ago, when I interviewed a cyborg for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. It was my first big opportunity as a writer. I had been pitching newspapers and magazines for a year trying to break into a major media outlet. My pitches had, for the most part, gone ignored, until one day I stumbled on a story so unusual, so over-the-top exciting, I knew in my heart it was a winner. Once I had gathered enough information, I typed an email to the technology editor with the carefully crafted subject line: ‘A Cyborg is Coming to Town.’ Lights dim; silence descends. The only movement within the Telus Spark Science Centre is the soft fade of the LEDs that line the fashion runway. From within the media pit the anticipation is palpable. This isn’t New York Fashion Week. It’s not even a fashion week, or anywhere in America for that matter. But what’s about to take place on this Calgary catwalk isn’t a story about where we are, but who we are. It’s about what we are becoming.

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The show is called MakeFashion, and it’s a hightech, high fashion event that asks audiences to consider the future of wearable technology beyond the wrist. More than 100 artists, designers, and creators will display 40 one-ofa-kind, wearable art pieces that incorporate emerging technologies such as 3D printing, projection mapping, and electronic brain sensing.

If fashion is about looking forward, MakeFashion embraces the opportunities of a world in which technology isn’t just something we hold in our hands or put in our pockets; it’s something that will be worn. It will touch our skin.

The subject line wasn’t an exaggeration. It was the summer of 2014, and I had learned that Neil Harbisson—who was born colourblind and has an antenna integrated into his skull so he can sense colour via sound and vibration—would be speaking in my home city of Toronto, Ontario. By the true definition of the word, Neil is a humanmachine hybrid. (See Blohm+Voss, Issue 1 for a full feature on Harbisson) It was through meeting Neil and hearing his story that I fully grasped that we aren’t just wearing technology: We are becoming technology. It has become my chosen career: chronicler of future fashion, connected clothing and wearable technology. I’ve interviewed leading fashion tech designers in New York and corresponded from Silicon Valley’s first fashion week. I’ve become obsessed. While we’re not all prepared to live with antennas in our heads like Neil Harbisson, stories are emerging everywhere about how we are integrating technology into our everyday selves.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Bird from the Airâ&#x20AC;?

Jacket sculpture by The Unseen, designed by Lauren Bowker. The garment reacts to the movement of air, changing colour with environmental conditions.

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A 3-D printed dress, debuted in the Paris Fashion Week Spring 2013 as part of a collaboration with fashion designer Iris Van Herpen for her show â&#x20AC;&#x153;Voltageâ&#x20AC;?.

“Wearable technology” has so far focused on wrist-worn devices like Fitbit and Apple Watch. While “wristables” have catapulted wearables into mainstream consciousness, they only scratch the surface in terms of what it means to wear technology. As sensors become smaller and batteries thinner and more flexible, one thing is clear: the next generation of wearable tech will look a lot more like a Ralph Lauren gown and a lot less like a Seiko watch. Hardware is getting softer, as it’s being woven into the fibres and fabrics of our clothing. These textiles, loosely referred to as “smart fabrics,” will extend the function of our clothing and enable new avenues of human expression and connection. Our clothing will do everything from deliver heat to our bodies when we’re cold to monitor our breathing patterns when we’re sick. Smart Fabric garments often debut as costume and concept pieces. In 2011, London-based Studio XO created a array of connected stage outfits for the Black Eyed Peas’ world tour. The costumes were made of leather and LEDs and were able to communicate with wireless systems around the stage to trigger audio loops and project light shows.

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Above: #techstyle at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

While costume and concept pieces are able to demonstrate the capabilities of the fashions of the future, many wonder about the commercial implications. The commercialisation of technical textiles comes with a special set of challenges, since electronics are not easily washable at the moment. Still, leading companies are testing the limits of what’s possible. Last year, Google announced a collaboration with Levis to weave touch and gesture interactivity into textiles, known as Project Jacquard. The idea is to make the fibres of your jeans from the same touch-sensitive materials as the face of your smartphone, with embedded electronics and bluetooth connectivity, so that you could dim the lights in your home just by swiping your jeans. The Bubbelle Dress, one of a series of dynamic garments developed by Philips Design as part of their SKIN research into emotional sensing.

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This Spring at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, visitors to the #TECHSTYLE exhibit encountered Ying Gao’s Incertitudes, a set of sound-reactive cocktail dresses that play with notions of proximity and interactivity. Sewing pins embellished onto the dresses are electronically-activated to move at the sound of a speaker’s voice, giving the dress a sense of presence.

The MFA Boston also commissioned a work by Italian fashion brand CuteCircuit. Their MFA dress is a flapper-inspired evening gown made from proprietary fabric and Swarovski crystals on rose gold and silver-plated chains. It includes more than 10,000 micro-LEDs, which display tweets and animations on the dress.

Earlier this year, the US Government invested $320 million in an advanced fabrics project in collaboration with the Defense Department, universities including the MIT, and nearly 50 other companies. The aim of the project is to push the American textile industry into the digital age and embed a number of tiny semiconductors and sensors into fabrics that can test the limits of our clothing’s capabilities. Perhaps the most popular consumer example of a smart fabrics product is the Polo Tech shirt. A collaboration between Montreal-based OmSignal, MAS holdings, and Ralph Lauren, the Polo Tech shirt is a smart shirt woven with silver fibres that gather data from its wearer. The shirt interfaces with your iPhone to provide metrics such as heart-rate and breathing depth. In line with the Polo Tech shirt, many smart apparel products available on the market today focus on measuring and monitoring the body. By gathering biodata, our clothing can now hold up a data mirror to ourselves, a phenomenon known as the Quantified Self. Today it’s possible to provide your doctor or personal trainer with a snapshot of your biometrics, with minuteby-minute insights about your resting heart rate, blood pressure, sleep depth, and calories burned and consumed.

The idea is to make the fibres of your jeans from the same touch-sensitive materials as the face of your smartphone, with embedded electronics and bluetooth connectivity, so that you could dim the lights in your home just by swiping your jeans.

Richard Nicollâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Tinkerbell dress, designed with London fashion laboratory Studio XO, for Disney. It is made from fibreoptic fabric, LEDs tailored within the dress create a digital pixie dust effect.

B+V = beautiful technology

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While the designs showcased at MakeFashion won’t be available at your consumer electronics store any time soon, they test the limits of what’s possible.

Although the Quantified Self has tremendous implications for our health and wellness, my research currently focuses on wearables that are not only beyond the wrist, but also beyond the Quantified Self, which is how I found myself crouched in the media pit of a Calgary runway show. The lights rise. The music sounds. The black curtain at the end of the runway opens, and one by one the models glide out: a romantic evening dress that bustles and falls based on the wearer’s brainwaves; a cyperpunk suit of armour with a high-neck collar that expands and contracts based on the wearer’s excitement; a pair of a-line skirts that light up with LEDs when in proximity to one another. While the designs showcased at MakeFashion won’t be available at your consumer electronics store any time soon, they test the limits of what’s possible. They gesture towards a future where our clothing will be hyperconnected and hyper-communicative. The wearables of the future will do much more than just count our steps. Tomorrow’s fashions are posed to augment our bodies and extend our abilities. They’ll blur the line between man and machine, and ultimately call into question what it means to be human.

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Below: “Molecule” shoe by Francis Bitonti Studio Inc.

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Harnessing Nature

Exploration + Innovation

On the edges of the Earth, there are men and women pushing the limits of their imagination, their physical capabilities and the brilliance of technology that has enabled the sport of kitesurfing. By Jim Gaunt

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French marine photographer Pierre Bouras happened to be shooting the mayhem at Jaws when Vari appeared and caught what Bouras calls, “the best wave I’ve ever seen.” The simple premise is that wind energy is controlled from a kite via a harness to a rider, who uses that energy for speed and direction— and sometimes altitude—to play in surf or on snow, to race, to do tricks and jumps, or to take long journeys, alone or as a team. Kites have been used to climb mountains and then fly off them, to set new records to reach the pole on skis, to access huge waves, to jump 20 metres off the sea and, in more recent years, begin to break sailing speed records. One day in February earlier this year, a huge swell kicked up by El Niño hit the north shore of Maui, Hawaii. The conditions attract the world’s top big-wave surfers from halfway around the world to attempt the magical, legendary, freak of nature wave that is known by the Hawaiians as Pe’ahi. The rest of the world knows it as Jaws. When conditions are right, it’s the biggest breaking wave in the world.

It’s these wildly various ways of using and enjoying today’s kites that has allowed sports based on the technology to explode in the last 20 years. Materials and craftsmanship are fundamental to kitesurfing. Advances in computational fluid dynamics, and advances in lightweight materials have helped the boards, kites and harnesses advance incredibly quickly— both in terms of performance and safety.

Martin Vari, 34, retired Argentine freestyle kitesurfing world champion just happened to be on the island for the El Niño swell. He had never kitesurfed Jaws—only four other riders had ever dared it—but had always wanted to. He grabbed his gear and headed to the coast, a range of black volcanic cliffs facing a massive, heaving ocean. That day, French marine photographer Pierre Bouras was shooting the mayhem at Jaws when Vari, who had kitesurfed miles along the coast to get to the break, appeared and caught what Bouras calls, “the best wave I’ve ever seen.”

Today’s kites are easier and less physical to master than windsurfing, water-skiing or wakeboarding thanks to the waist harness that transfers power through the body rather than exclusively through the rider’s arms.

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While kitesurfing down the face of the biggest waves on Earth remains the extreme edge of the hugely versatile sport, the entry-point has broadened for newcomers with massive increases in equipment safety and ease of use. Two versions of kitesurfing are entering the pantheon of Olympic sports, with kiteboarding having been introduced as an official sport in the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and kite foil racing on the cards for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

Kiting’s cultish expansion across the world has been fueled by the accessibility afforded by new equipment which allows almost instant de-powering of the kite, and the almost endless variety of ways kite-power can augment and enhance existing sports.

There are clear parallels in the technology that has totally changed the look of sailing: One look at the America’s Cup boats and you understand how advanced, incredibly strong and lightweight fibres have reinvented what it means to harness the wind.

And now, just as with the America’s Cup boats, hydrofoiling has been added to a kitesurfer’s options. Just like in high-performance sailing, hydrofoils are having an incredible effect in kite racing. Offering a magic-carpet style ride, kite sailors float above the water’s surface with the hydrofoil providing both racers and recreational riders access to mind-blowing average speeds and angles-of-attack in relatively light winds.

Sir Richard is one of the sport’s most passionate advocates for the advantages that it offers the body and mind. Virgin’s Kitesurfing Armada is an ongoing global event that sees increasing numbers of kitesurfers—now in the hundreds— complete a ‘record mile’ together for the record of the Largest Parade of Kitesurfers. The current milestone of 415 kitesurfers was set in Cape Town in February.

It has become a darling of adrenaline-jacking entrepreneurs. MaiTai Global, set up as a co-venture by Red Bull pro rider Susi Mai and Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur Bill Tai, brings together the world’s best riders with scions of technology. MaiTai events in exclusive resorts around the world host the likes of Larry Page and Sir Richard Branson at Necker Island in the BVIs with others from Skype, Apple and Adobe to brainstorm the future… and kitesurf.

But kitesurfing’s true draw is its ability to enable people’s access to nature, to the sea and air and to engage with the outdoors in wholly new ways. After conquering Jaws, Martin Vari headed downwind back to where he could get out back onto dry land after having kitesurfed one of the biggest waves in the world. “That was a special moment in the ocean, digesting and reflecting on how much I love spending time on the water and riding these conditions,” he said. “What had started as a ride upwind full of anxiety and fear ended up with a ride downwind full of emotion and happiness.” On the following pages, we’ve put together a list of some of the best kitesurfing destinations ideally-suited for those who might be holidaying on a superyacht.

Opening pages: Martin Vari, 34, conquers one of the biggest waves in the world on the north shore of Maui. Photo: Pierre Bouras Below: Nick Jacobsen launches from the roof at Necker Island. Photo: Kevin Wolf

B+V = exploration technology

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Caribbean

Union Island, the Grenadines

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Best for: Beautiful kiteboarding scenes, flat water and like-minded, fun people.

Opposite: Happy Island bar in the lagoon just off Union Island, The Grenadines. Photo: Ben Findlay Left: Enjoying liquid refreshments, mid-session: Pro riders Jeremie Tronet, Craig Cunningham and Colleen Carroll at Happy Island. Photo: JT Pro Center

There’s even a bar on its own small island in the lagoon called ‘Happy Island’ where you can surf up and order a drink while still flying your kite.

Union Island, the Grenadines The Caribbean is blessed with beautiful kitesurfing spots and regular trade winds. Barbados, Dominican Republic and Venezuela being some of the most popular, but none are as idyllic as Union Island in the Grenadines. The kitesurfers here enjoy some of the bluest water you’ve ever seen as well as very consistent, cross shore winds – and it’s a growing scene. The main wind season runs from mid-December to late June; the windiest time being from Christmas until April, averaging 15 – 22 knots. The beach at The Anchorage Yacht Club is generally the most popular spot and where you’ll find the JT Pro Center kitesurfing school operating, one of the three kite schools on Union Island. The lagoon is surrounded by reef that creates a perfect flat water spot just downwind of a popular anchorage for sailboats. To top it off, there’s even a bar on its own small island in the lagoon called ‘Happy Island’ where you can kite up and order a drink while still flying your kite. Decent kite handling skills are required, especially after one or two of their dangerous rum punches.

If you have a boat as a base, the waters around Union are a dream and there are several more special flat water kite areas to explore. Frigate is one of the best alternative spots where the wind blows offshore over a walkway of an abandoned marina project, creating perfectly calm seas. Numerous other stretches of fantastic surf are only reachable by boat, including some incredible downwinders to the surrounding islands and reefs. If you want the support and motivation of joining an experienced group, most of the schools run supervised trips to a range of heavenly locations. Union Island itself is only small at around four square miles. The Anchorage Yacht Club is a popular choice for kitesurfers to stay and is the largest piece of privately owned beach front land on the island, with a bar, restaurant, marina and yacht services. Clifton is the main town and just a three minute walk from the yacht club. You can rent a bike and the local buses charge about $2 to travel between villages. If the wind is light hike around the island, explore the Tobago Cays, swim with turtles, go fishing, rent bikes or just relax on the beach, eating seafood and investigate the spa treatments available at the yacht club.

Flying here Union Island international airport (UNI) connects to most places within 160km or so and is well linked to Barbados, Grenada, St.Lucia, St.Vincent and all the little Grenadines and Martinique. Blohm+Voss

Useful contacts JT Pro Center: kitesurfgrenadines.com Happykite Surf Shop: appykitegrenadines.com Anchorage Yacht Club: aycunionisland.com

Caribbean

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands

Best for: Adventurous freeride â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;off-pisteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; like terrain.

A kiteboarding paradise with uncrowded, pristine, powder soft Blohm+Voss

beaches, warm turquoise seas and

varied freeriding terrain.

Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands If you’re looking for a wide range of kiteboarding conditions for general freeriding, then the waters surrounding the island of Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos are ideal. A kiteboarding paradise with uncrowded, pristine, powder soft beaches, warm turquoise seas and varied freeriding terrain. Providenciales also offers foolproof beaches for learning as most are easy for launching and landing your kite and if the waves and wind ally there’s occasionally some sensational down-the-line wave riding. On the east end of Provo, Long Bay is waistdeep for miles with sand underfoot and plenty of space which is why it’s so ideal for learning. The easterly trade winds are strongest here and cross-on 90% of the time. Grace Bay is on the western side with two to four foot waves on the reef and sand bars, however the reef is exposed at low tide and the wave riding is offshore. The current can be fierce with the tide and it’s busy with boat traffic, but this is the gateway to some spectacular and unforgettable downwinder kite safaris. The kitesurfing school Big Blue have been scooting these waters and leading groups for almost two decades, so they know the score and how to get the most out of the area. Blue Hills in the northwest is the mirror opposite of Long Bay; cross-on conditions and miles of open lagoon and beach all to yourself. Five Cays on Provo is excellent if you want to get away from the busier Long Bay, and there’s a superb watering hole for lunch and a cold beer after a big session. Some of the neighbouring islands also have idyllic surf grounds. You can stop by the islands of North, Middle and South Caicos for kiteboarding, or for a simple nonkiting adventure and really discover what a watersports wonderland it is. Northeast winter trades and east-southeasters in summer average 10 - 25 knots with easy learning conditions year-round. Optimal winds are in January, February, March and April. The best wave riding is usually in February and March. Average kite sizes are 10 – 12 metres. Left: Enjoying the flat waters around The Turks and Caicos Islands. Rider: Sam Medysky. Photo: Quincy Dein / Best Kiteboarding

Useful contacts Big Blue Unlimited: bigblueunlimited.com

Blohm+Voss

Flying here Providenciales, Turks and Caicos (PLS) is the international airport. Grand Turk (GDT) is connected via inter-island air services (25 mins). Grace Bay is then 20 minutes away.

Below: Hang Loose Beach, Gizzeria, Italy. Photo: Hang Loose Beach Top right: Racers cross the start line at the Kite Foil Gold Cup at Hang Loose Beach, Gizzeria, Italy. Photo: Jim Gaunt / Kiteworld Magazine Bottom right: Getting air off Hang Loose Beach. Photo: Hang Loose Beach

Mediterranean

Hangloose beach, Italy Best for: Super stable, gentle, easy kiteboarding conditions, which are also ideal for foil boarding – as well as lively music and beach parties with a fun, young, local crowd.

Hangloose beach, Italy If you’re looking to mix easy kitesurfing conditions with a lively week of partying on the beach, then Gizzeria on the Tyrrhenian Sea is the perfect place for you. Located within the Gulf of Lamezia Terme, the conditions are very calm and safe and, although attract a lot of beginners for that reason, the centre at Hangloose Beach also hosts World Championship kite racing events, where you can see the fastest and world’s most technical kite racers going hell for leather in tight, nail biting race action on the hydrofoil kiteboards. Witnessing the power that these surfers can develop in just six or seven knots of wind is phenomenal.

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Superior conditions are from April to September in the prevailing northwest crossonshore wind with flat waters. The winds can be powerful in the winter but are more frontal than thermal, so not as regular but there can be favourable wave conditions. In the summer the most popular kites are 12 or nine metres and the weather is gorgeous.

Flying here Lamezia Terme International (SUF) is just three kilometres from Gizzeria with lots of low cost airlines flying in from all across Europe Useful contacts Hangloose beach: hangloosebeach.com

Hang Loose beach teach all levels from April – September and also provide a rescue boat, hot showers, a lawn to wash equipment, equipment rental, surf shop, restaurant and bar... and incredible parties on the beach throughout the summer with thousands of partygoers filling the beach and dancing at several DJ booths. For a break from kitesurfing, cruise to the stunning Aeolian Islands which are just four hours away.

If you're looking to mix easy kitesurfing conditions with a lively week of partying on the beach, then Gizzeria on the Tyrrhenian Blohm+Voss

Sea is the place for you.

Mediterranean

Ulcinj, Montenegro

Best for: Regular winds, warm waters, and discovering an upcoming destination in Europe steeped in history.

Ulcinj, Montenegro Just a short flight from anywhere in Europe, Ulcinj (pronounced: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ooltseenieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), the southernmost town in Montenegro, is a new kiting hotspot in Europe featuring a 14km sandy beach and super steady side-onshore thermal winds that blow every day in the summer. The huge Velika Plaza beach is set in a protected natural reserve surrounded by dunes and hidden by alluvial forests. The prevailing wind comes side-onshore from the right and conditions are excellent for beginners and freestylers all the way along. South winds occasionally blow cross-onshore from the left and can be vicious, kicking waves up to two metres high when the shorebreak isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t suitable for beginners.

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As one of the newest places on the kiteboarding map, Ulcinj although a newcomer to the kiteboarding scene, is one of the oldest urban architectural landscapes along the Adriatic Sea, set on a hillside with an ancient fortified city, cobblestone streets and medieval buildings.

There is only a small provincial tourist strip, so the city retains its authentic atmosphere and the locals are very friendly. The main city beach can become busy, but travel just outside the town and you’ll find quieter coves with crystal clear waters. In general, Montenegro is developing as an ‘Adventure Tourism’ destination with a number of companies offering white water rafting (along Europe’s deepest canyon), kayaking, mountain biking, climbing, scuba diving, sailing, hiking or paragliding. Above: The southernmost town in Montenegro is the newest kiting hotspot in Europe. Photos: KiteWorldWide holidays Below: Kitesurfing the river mouth at Ulcinj. Photo: KiteWorldWide

The heart of Ulcinj is approximalety ten kilometres from the kite spot. The first 80 to 100 metres out are waist deep and the seabed is soft, consisting of fine sand that’s free of rocks and reef. The tides have little impact in Montenegro, so you can start kiting whenever the wind kicks in (which is usually between noon and 2pm when the thermals pick up). A few kilometres downwind there is a river mouth with calm water which provides handsome ground for working on your tricks. Enjoy 270 days of sunshine a year and from May to September the Albanian Alps to the south provide steady thermal winds that will hit the coast side-shore in the early afternoon at 18 to 25 knots. Bring your eight to 12 metre kites in the high season (June to mid-September) and your 12 metre and above in the off season (April to May and mid- September to October). There are already some schools and tour operators currently based there now, proof of the growing popularity of kitesurfing in the area. Ask them for the low down on the area and some guidance for riding in the river mouth.

Flying here Podgorica (TGD) is the capital served by flights from most major airports with Montenegro Airlines and Austrian Airlines (via Vienna). Blohm+Voss

Useful contacts Kiteworldwide: kiteworldwide.com Kite Loop: kiteboardingmontenegro.com

Indian Ocean

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Best for: One of the most progressive kitesurfing experiences you could hope to experience.

Above: Kiting the azure waters of Cocos. Photo: Zephyr Kite Tours

Consistent tradewind conditions in the main season mean winds are reliable all day, every day and you can be riding anything from eight to 14 metre kites. The Cocos (Keeling) Islands An especially remote atoll located right on the Indian Ocean trade wind route, this magical and unique group of islands offers unreal flat water freeriding, fantastic learning conditions and some very adventurous kitesurfing.

Blohm+Voss

Kite Beach is sited at the southern tip of West Island where the wind is cross onshore and blows cleanly between West and South Islands. The water is waist deep with sand underfoot and sparce coral. Mostly flat conditions with some wind chop, it’s perfect for beginners, intermediates and advanced riders but can only be kited at high to mid tide. There’s also boat support on hand thanks to Zephyr Kite Tours. Other stretches like Long Beach and Sweet Spot are accessible via down winders. Access to outer islands is possible from Levis if you have boat access where you’ll find the only wave riding around the islands.

Trade winds blow from June to November / December. Great months to visit are July to September with around 90% of days over 15 knots. It can be hit and miss either side of those months with the light airs hitting from January to March.

There is a community of Australian ex-pats who live on the island. Being so remote, food on the Cocos is all imported but there’s a modest supermarket with the essentials and the locals host regular food nights at which visitors are always welcome. Cocos Malay food is delicious, but be warned, it’s spicy. In the unlikely event of no-wind there’s myriad activities on the Cocos. Take your boat to Home Island for a traditional Cocos-Malay meal and play scroungers golf on a Thursday with the island residents. Head to the Zephyr shack on kite beach for SUP hire and paddle downwind to see the green turtles and reef sharks or fish, surf or explore the neighbouring islands instead.

Flying here Flights to CKI are from Perth international (PER) airport and provided by Virgin Australia twice weekly via Christmas Island. There are strict baggage restrictions, so make sure you stick to the weight allowance or you might not travel with your gear. Useful contacts Zephyr Kite Tours: zephyrkitetours.com

HOTEL VIER JAHRESZEITEN HAMBURG

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Curation

OXIDANE Three artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work evoke a breathtaking reflection of our relationship with the sea: Astor Milan Salcedo in Hamburg, Jason deCaires Taylor in Lanzarote and Carol Bruton in Monaco. By Richard Unwin

Creativity inspired by the sea, and our relationship with it, remains undiminished, while the work of marine-inclined artists is as rich and varied as the personality of water itself.

It is the duality of water – both commonplace and mysterious, life-giving and life-taking – which explains why we find it so captivating. Distilled in the invigoration we feel standing on the seashore, the basic human need for contact with water inevitably builds to a desire to venture off the land; a desire from which the history of shipbuilding and maritime exploration has developed over millennia. The creativity inspired by the sea—and our relationship with it—remains undiminished, while the work of marine-inclined artists is as rich and varied as the personality of water itself. Astor Milan Salcedo’s Construction series of artworks, which elaborate on photographs of the Blohm+Voss shipyard, point to the complexity involved in land-based animals aspiring to master the sea. The Hamburg shipyard is a place of concrete and metal, a place where cranes rise against the sky and the grit of hard work is laid bare. Salcedo’s photography captures industry and toil. He then overlays bright, abstract blocks of paint which allude to the beauty of the vessels that emerge from this focused manufacturing process.

Astor Milan Salcedo

“The stark contrast between the yard’s industrial work and the beauty of its finished products mesmerized me,” Salcedo explains. “I wanted to show the actual site very objectively through photography and overpaint the photographs with colours to bring out the beauty of it all.” Born in Madrid and having travelled widely since childhood, Salcedo has been based in Hamburg for the past twelve years. It is a city in which Blohm+Voss is a constant presence, he says. “You walk down to the port and Blohm+Voss is part of the landscape.” Spurred-on by his interest in yachts — particularly the way they synthesise high-tech performance with beautiful design — Salcedo has found the shipyard fertile ground for his art. In total,

Opening page: Jason deCaires Taylor, “Solar Steps”, Lanzarote, 2014 Below: Astor Milan Salcedo, “Steps”

“I wanted to show the actual site very objectively through photography and overpaint the photographs with colours to bring out the beauty of it all.” Astor Milan Salcedo

the former fashion and portrait photographer has produced 14 pieces in his Blohm+Voss series, all produced between 2014 and 2015. Each work can take Salcedo up to 8 months to complete, from the initial shoot (often on medium format film) to developing the photographs and working with specialist printers to enlarge them. A critical point in his process comes once he is happy with the tone and colour, and the hand-made prints are ready to be painted. “Each stroke will leave a permanent mark,” Salcedo says, “so I am always excited and nervous to apply the colour. Most of the time it works out.”

The style of painting, both in the dashes Salcedo adds to photographs and in his standalone, abstract canvases, is frequently evocative of water, particularly the reflections, shimmers and ripples of its surface.

Salcedo’s Blohm+Voss series is a continuation of a recurring reference he makes to water in his works. The style of painting, both in the dashes Salcedo adds to photographs and in his standalone, abstract canvases, is frequently evocative of water, particularly the reflections, shimmers and ripples of its surface. It is an artistic fascination in which he is clearly not alone. Looking at Salcedo’s paintings it is easy to think of Monet’s water lilies, the great Impressionist finding endless inspiration in the pond of his garden in Giverny. Indeed, water and the sea are as integral to the history of art as they are to history in general, with Botticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’ (c.1486) an early portrayal of the sea’s creative potential. In considering the painters associated with water, one must mention Canaletto, whose vast cityscapes of Venice and London are not so far removed from Salcedo’s shipyard scenes in their depiction of the urban, industrial environment thriving at the water’s edge.

Left: Astor Milan Salcedo. Right above: “New York Bridge 212/02” Right below: “Dock 10 No2”

Below: Jason deCaires Taylor, “The Rubicon”, Museo Atlántico, Lanzarote, 2016

Beginning with the creation of his first underwater sculpture park off the coast of Grenada in 2006,

Above: Jason deCaires Taylor, diver, naturalist, artist. Right: “Man On Fire”, MUSA, Mexico, 2011 Following pages: “The Rising Tide”, River Thames, London 2016

Taylor’s unique transformations of the sea floor can now be found at locations around the world.

While many artists have been inspired by water it is usually taken for granted that the finished pieces should be kept safely on dry land. By installing his striking figurative sculptures on the sea floor, Jason deCaires Taylor therefore makes a dramatic break with tradition. With his monumental projects reminiscent of underwater ruins and the remains of sunken cities, the qualified diving instructor and underwater naturalist has found an exhibition space more attuned to his work than any museum or gallery. Both playful and profound, with subjects ranging from men and women in everyday, modern dress to a classic Volkswagen Beetle, Taylor’s underwater art also plays the role of an artificial

reef, bolstering the marine habitat. The careful, non-polluting human intervention of the artist helps to focus attention on man’s less friendly impact on the sea: a story of environmental destruction that shows that while water may be mysterious and dangerous to us, we also hold it within our power to do untold damage to the world it supports. Beginning with the creation of his first underwater sculpture park off the coast of Grenada in 2006, Taylor’s unique transformations of the sea floor can now be found at locations around the world. Cast from pH-neutral cement, the submerged sculptures can be examined by scuba divers and snorkellers and appreciated through the beautiful photography Taylor composes himself.

The British-born artist’s latest project—the Museo Atlántico in Playa Blanca, Lanzarote — is his first major underwater project in Europe. Featuring hundreds of life-sized figures arranged in installations that refer to climate change and environmental damage, as well as migration, the ‘museum’ focuses attention on the tendency of both society and government to turn a blind eye to the pressing urgency of the issues that surround us.

Jason deCaires Taylor

Turning the idea of human impact on its head, it’s interesting that much of the aesthetic power of Taylor’s work comes from the effect of sea and sea life on his sculptures. The wearing down of saltwater erosion and the growth of coral and other organisms colonises and subverts the artwork, leading to a spontaneous display of abstract colours and pockmarked figures that slowly merge into the marine abyss. Echoing Salcedo’s work, this overlay of nature on the manmade speaks of change and juxtaposition, related in a language that is both joyous and colourful.

Below: Carol Bruton, artist. See her work at the Monaco Yacht Show, 2016. Right page:“Celeste” by Carol Bruton

Where Taylor submerges his sculptures to give them life, Canadian painter and sculptor Carol Bruton captures the essence of the marine environment and brings it back to land. A keen sea swimmer inspired by the interplay of water, light and sky, Bruton’s art is seemingly hewn from nuggets of tropical colour and light. Her pieces are perfected to the point where they are almost a pure form, counterbalanced by strange, circular markings that, depending on your viewpoint, might be salt crystals, cellular life, or the surface of an alien world. Bruton was born in Toronto but spent her childhood in Spain and has always been drawn to water, to the extent that that she has often lived next to it, from the River Thames and canals in England to the Persian Gulf. Now upon the French Riviera, Bruton notes that while water has been the thread that has linked her entire life, it is swimming in the Mediterranean Sea that has had the most powerful impact on her. “Particularly in the winter, it’s like being plugged into the world's greatest power grid,” she says. The dichotomy that exists in Bruton’s work between the luminous, ethereal colours that hint at some universal realm and the deliberate markings that

Carol Bruton

give her pieces their individuality, comes from the vastness of being immersed in the sea. “I am drawn to the eternal, changing patterns that the wind, light and planetary cycles form on the surface of the sea,” Bruton explains. “When I dive into the depths, turn and look up through the surface to the sky, the floating particles of organic matter are the inspiration behind my paintings.” The circular forms of the artist’s paintings are achieved through the use of different fine brushes, applying a blend of pigments to what Bruton calls her, “translucent lozenges of colour.” Bruton works the surfaces horizontally; allowing the 12-hour drying time of the paint to sometimes dictate all-night working sessions. Two of Bruton’s paintings—‘Gold on Peacock Blue’ and ‘A Blue Mass’—beautifully distil her ability to evoke both the microscopic and the astronomic, suggesting an impression of islands dotted across a watery world. We might hope that this scene will remain constant, but inherent in the painter’s amorphous, delicate aesthetic is a sense of change and the notion that everything, in the end, is fleeting. And yet, while there is still time, we have the urge to dive into the blue as Bruton seemingly urges us, or else set sail on the vessels celebrated by Salcedo. If Taylor makes us stop for a moment and consider our society rendered as a contemporary Pompeii or Atlantis, he asks us to revel in the sea, only to do so in a way that will preserve its vitality for a little longer.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am drawn to the eternal, hanging patterns that the wind, light and planetary cycles form on the surface of the seaâ&#x20AC;? Carol Bruton

“Gold on Peacock Blue” by Carol Bruton

“A Blue Mass” by Carol Bruton

WELCOME TO OUR CARIBBEAN HIDEOUT Picture dramatic panoramas, intimate bluffs and the tranquillity of an untrodden beach, and you have the perfect site for a custom home at Christophe Harbour. Along with the private Pavilion beach club and endless island adventures, enjoy the Caribbean’s first Park Hyatt hotel and the region’s finest superyacht marina, complete with famous Kittitian hospitality.

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This isn’t just any Caribbean community; this is Christophe Harbour.

A P P R OV E D F O R C I T I Z E N SH I P B Y I N V E ST M E N T · W W W. C H R I ST OP H E HA R B O U R . C OM · + 1 8 6 9 . 4 6 6 . 8 7 3 8

Into the Blue Ascension Island

Exploration

The BLUE Marine Foundation helped secure a marine protected zone around a remote South Atlantic island. Photojournalist Paul Colley heads to Ascension and explores its unique and remote marine habitat.

The Blue Marine Foundation

The Blue Marine Foundation combats over-fishing and the destruction of biodiversity, arguably the largest problem facing the world’s oceans. By delivering practical conservation, including the creation of large-scale marine reserves, BLUE’s aim is to see 10% of the world’s oceans under protection by 2020 and over 30% longer term. The charity also works to establish sustainable fisheries so fish stocks can begin to recover. www.bluemarinefoundation.com

Ascension Island is the pinnacle of a towering volcanic sea mount rising like a relic from the mid-Atlantic ridge. One feels distinctly small there, not because Ascension is big, but because of the realisation that you are a tiny dot in the delirious blue vastness of the South Atlantic. But it is here, around this extremely remote British Overseas Territory that one can find some of the most impressive aggregations of marine life on Earth. And it is for that reason that I came here: to witness and record the beauty and the bounty of one of the last unspoiled marine ecosystems as part of my work for the Blue Marine Foundation.

Blohm+Voss

Near the shore, around the caves that pockmark the coast, one gets glimpses of what the oceans can support if properly managed: Large crayfish, groupers and moray eels abound in numbers that exist nowhere else in the world. One species, the black durgeon triggerfish, is so numerous that it can turn the water from bright blue to black as the inquisitive creatures mill around us. But there is even greater marine treasure offshore: big oceanic predators that are so critical to an ocean’s health. Recordbreaking marlin, bullet-like yellowfin tuna, playful dolphins and graceful manta rays top a long list of species that call Ascension their home.

Opening page: A diver explores one of the many caves along the coast of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. Right: Black Durgeon Triggerfish school in their thousands beneath the archway at Boatswain Bird Island, one of the most popular dive sites on Ascension. All photos: Paul Colley

I arrived in Ascension to document this treasure. Setting a modestly powered small inflatable boat against the South Atlantic swell is a bone-shattering experience. Steering into stiff winds and waves, the boat crests and falls with rhythmic thumps. Forging out to the very best dive sites on the Southeastern corner of Ascension requires a full throttle. Eyes burn from salt spray and the thought of conversation with my diving companions evaporates. But the moment we get into the lee of Boatswain Bird Island, spirits rise and nervous banter begins with the anticipation of diving at one of the most remote locations in the world. Steep rock walls herald depths well in excess of 100 metres only a short distance out. Two miles from shore, the ocean depth plummets to over 1000 metres. Boatswain Bird Island is a natural refuge where thousands of exquisite sea birds wheel around vertical cliffs. From a distance, we see them in formation describing long, sweeping arcs through the sky. Closer, the cacophony of clucking and screeching rises as the outboard engines are throttled back. Eddies from the South-East trade winds waft an acrid stench of guano, so donning a mask and air regulator cuts out the odour; a backward roll off the boat brings a cooling embrace and a wonderful underwater silence. The undersea landscape is stark, but beautiful. Bright red sponges adorn ancient volcanic rock formations that dominate the steep drop-offs, caves and huge boulders in the tidal zone. Further out at 30 metres depth are coarse pumice sand flats that drop away into the ocean depths. Waves create white halos around the stubborn rock stretching for the surface. Finally, we see what used to be common: Huge schools of fish. Juvenile horse eye jacks huddle for safety in dense shimmering schools that dash around in nervous formation as big Almaco jacks harry their flanks. On a good day, one can dive to 30 metres close to the rock walls and watch fish in their tens of thousands parade against the azure backdrop. Over time, we see green and hawksbill turtles, dolphins and manta rays. I adore soaking in these amazing scenes, but remind myself to look at the sea bed too. Ascension is home to 108 fish species and ten are endemic. My favourite is the charismatic Marmalade Razorfish, a shy small creature that will disappear head first into the sand if you spook it. Slow, careful approaches reward the photographer with images of a striking fish in dapper livery.

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I always keep looking back to the deep blue, because then you will see those misunderstood predators, the sharks. Humans have developed an irrational fear of a creature that kills only half a dozen people a year world-wide. Compare that with hippos that kill nearly 3,000. The sad truth is that humans kill over 100 million sharks a year, mainly for shark fin soup through cruel and destructive fishing. Even where sharks are not purposefully targeted, boats taking other fish at an industrial scale are killing sharks as an unintended by-catch at an alarming rate. And of course, once you see and understand what the oceans can look like, the life they can support, you realise what responsibility we have to protect special places like these. On the morning of 3 January 2016, the BBC, the Sunday Times and other publications heralded a substantial environmental success. Headlines and newsreaders confirmed that, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;an area almost the size of the UK is to be closed to fishing around Ascension in the tropical Atlantic.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The Blue Marine Foundation, the tiny but spirited charity known simply as BLUE, had secured an enormous no-fishing zone at this tiny outpost of British Overseas Territory.

Africa

Mid-Atlantic Ridge

South America

Ascension Island

Blohm+Voss

Saint Helena

Tristan da Cunha

Left: The charismatic Marmalade Razorfish has a dapper livery and it is endemic to Ascension Island. Following page: Misunderstood top predators. Sharks are essential to any healthy ecosystem, but they are severely threatened by humans, who kill over 100 million every year.

B+V = environmental awareness

support domestic and international brands across the Asia Pacific region. Whilst scuba diving there on dynamite-blasted coral reefs, she witnessed the destruction that can be wrought on the marine environment without proper protection. Back in the UK, where she was brought up close to the mouth of the Channel, she brought her expertise and affinity with the sea to BLUE. She cleverly blends her passion for the environment with an eloquence for making the case to potential corporate partners and individual donors. The CEO of BLUE, Clare Brook, believes that the intention to designate half of Ascension’s waters is impressive, but only the start, because overfishing is global and needs a response that spans more than single areas. BLUE sees the Overseas Territories which include the remote South Atlantic islands of Ascension, Tristan da Cunha and Saint Helena as as conjoined territory spanning a critical large swath of ocean that needs protection. Ascension gives both hope and cause for reflection. Only where mankind cannot easily reach an environment does it seem to thrive as it was intended. But the crazy economics of commercial fishing are already bringing devastating unethical and often illegal practices to these remote locations. Commercial fishing licences that provide short term gain to countries who will quickly strip these resources bare is not sustainable. With the imagination being shown by BLUE, the government could help islanders develop alternate income streams from sport fishing, scuba diving and small scale sustainable fisheries. It needs a change of tack and some new partnerships.

BLUE is becoming the go-to organisation for ocean conservation. With drive and imagination, BLUE is engineering win-win situations, where all parties have incentives to succeed. This innovation, leadership and hope for the oceans is coming from a new generation of torch bearers and thinkers like Charles Clover, Clare and Sara-Jane. As passionate advocates for the global commons that so many of us take as a free good, these determined guardians need and deserve support to protect our oceans. We should watch with great interest what is next on BLUE’s agenda.

Blohm+Voss

BLUE’s Head of Partnerships, Sara-Jane Skinner, is one of the organisation’s great persuaders. With wide experience of events management, design and marketing she set up a successful company in Indonesia to help

Launched in Monaco and with Prince Albert as a founding patron, the Blue Marine Yacht Club is a fine example of how people already connected to the oceans can help. Sara-Jane enthusiastically articulates the benefits of supporting this innovation, which offers three tiers of membership to support BLUE projects. The Blue Marine Yacht Club has a voluntary code of conduct, which is a fabulous way of raising awareness about the ocean environment, whilst at the same time encouraging good practice from those who benefit from a wellmanaged common resource. BLUE is always seeking financial contributions to projects, but Sara-Jane believes that BLUE’s partners feel a deeper connection with the projects they are supporting. Not environmental box-ticking, but getting a bit more ocean salt into their bloodstream to develop deeper empathy for what is happening.

71% of our planet is water, but only 4% is protected, so small wonder that 90% of global fish stocks are now fully or over-exploited and that 90% of our large fish are gone. The consequences are farreaching and not only for the future of food. As Charles Clover, Executive Director of the Blue Marine Foundation proclaims starkly: “We have just squandered one of the greatest resources that we’ve

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ever had on the planet—wild fish.”

The people behind BLUE

award-winning documentary film that it inspired brought the problems of overfishing oceans into public focus. Charles typifies the BLUE approach, providing ideas to succeed where others fail, by quickly connecting the right people and by refusing to take no for an answer to problems that people have a collective responsibility to solve. Our oceans are in deep crisis as the overfishing onslaught continues apace. Those who see a looming precipice might be tempted to abrogate the heavy burden of associated responsibility to governments. But even international institutions are failing to provide much-needed vision and strategy. Instead, the real energy for change is coming from a small group of quietly determined people. They are intent on a revolution in ideas and action. Their unifying deep passion is to reverse decades of decline in ocean health and they excel at challenging the status quo, at forging innovative strong partnerships, and at making a difference. The Blue Marine Foundation, known affectionately as BLUE to its staff and supporters, is in the vanguard of these new forces for change. The marine conservation charity is relatively new, but very agile and dynamic. Crucially, it is effective, because it refuses to accept the bureaucratic delays that can blight tackling what is urgent and obvious. In their different ways, each person I get to know at BLUE strongly reflects what the organisation stands for.

Clare Brook was a pioneer of environmental investing before joining BLUE in 2014 and is interested in the increasing confluence of philanthropy and the corporate sector. As CEO, she aims to combine the rigour of the investment world with her passion for solving environmental problems. She has a refreshingly clear vision of what the UK could achieve through practical policy. She welcomes the early promise shown by the UK Government’s ‘Blue Belt’ commitment which pledges to protect great swathes of ocean containing around 94% of the UK’s biodiversity. Protecting these ‘fragments of paradise’, like Ascension, could be the Government’s most significant contribution to global conservation.

Blohm+Voss

Executive Director Charles Clover bubbles with the energy and enthusiasm of a driven man. An environment journalist with 30 years’ experience, he has covered virtually every issue that arises out of our treatment of nature and he knows what is at stake. His powerful and revealing book The End of the Line and the

Producer of the film The End of The Line, George Duffield, and executive producer Chris Gorell Barnes co-founded BLUE and are both trustees. Their film was a powerful agent for social change and it helped alert the world to the crisis. BLUE soon became instrumental in the designation of the largest no-take marine protected area in the world around the Chagos Archipelago or British Indian Ocean Territory. Chagos’s importance as a haven for marine biodiversity and as a site for scientific study is widely recognised. Six years later, BLUE’s impressive portfolio of conservation projects now span the globe, from the UK and Europe to the Caspian Sea, the Mediterranean, the Maldives and British overseas territories including Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.

Touching the Future

Blohm+Voss

Craftsmanship + Engineering

Boasting 8,000 material samples, Material ConneXionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s global network of libraries is helping to change the way designers from industries as diverse as automotive and fashion approach product design. But the innovations donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop there. By Tim Thomas

Blohm+Voss

“If an architecture firm calls us,” begins Michele Caniato, president and co-founder of materials library Material ConneXion, “and asks how many materials we look at every year for construction or interior design, our answer is simple: we don’t look at materials that way. We look at materials that are innovative and then it’s up to you, the client, to figure out how to use them. Our job is not to classify what a material can be used for, but rather what it is made of.”

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Material ConneXion was founded in 1997 in New York by businessman, designer and contract furniture specialist George Beylerian with Caniato—a Milanese architecture and industrial design graduate. “I was 24,” remembers Caniato. “I had just graduated and was working with this incredible man, my mentor Beylerian. He and I had this idea to start Material ConneXion and when we put it on paper our goal was to create a materials library for architects and interior designers because we both came from that industry. We started with 200 materials, three people and a lot of enthusiasm. I always joke that I came to New York to learn English – I never did learn English but I started a company”

Opening pages and right: The tabular display of the library allows for both visual and tactile interaction with the materials. Below left: the library samples are sorted into categories allowing members to target specific materials if they have an end product in mind.

It quickly became clear that Material ConneXion clients would be far more diverse than either Beylerian or Caniato could have imagined. Indeed, the first three clients through the doors were toymaker Mattel and fashion companies Victoria’s Secret and Coach. “We immediately realised that we were not just for interior decorators, architects and designers but that the library was really a platform for any company that was manufacturing any product,” says Caniato. “So the goal changed to bringing to the creative world innovative materials and processes that could be used from the interior of a new car to the packaging of a new line of perfume. And that has been the mission of the company – to discover materials that were perhaps developed for the aerospace industry and are now being used in a completely different environment.”

Material ConneXion is pointedly not sponsored by materials manufacturers, which means it is free to select the best and most innovative materials without compromise. Revenue comes from individuals and companies buying membership which gives them access to the libraries where they can see and touch the materials, and it already boasts a large number of Fortune 500 clients among its one million members. Further, a new Material ConneXion division—ThinkLAB—offers consulting services from advice on selecting materials to fullscale development of application in new products. Recent clients have included CitiBank, BMW, Puma, Logitech and Nike.

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It is a philosophy that has clearly worked. Fast forward two decades and Material ConneXion’s core library has 8,000 materials, with a team of materials scientists scouting the world for innovations and adding 40 to 50 new materials each month. The company boasts more than 23 libraries and offices in several countries, with full-service libraries in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Italy, Sweden, Spain and the USA,

and smaller and educational libraries in universities around the world. Material ConneXion’s ambitions stretch far wider, though. “Every office is bringing innovation from their own country so that is a very important part of growing our material footprint,” Caniato explains. “But my dream and goal is to have a materials library in every major city around the world.”

Top right: Titanium Ti64 from industrial 3D printer specialist EOS and samples from Material Art’s Nature Collection (opposite page) show the variety on display among the 8,000 material samples in the library. Below right: Dr Andrew Dent, who heads Material ConneXion's team of materials scientists.

“The Nike team came to us looking for a material for their Jordan brand of footwear,” Caniato explains. “They wanted a material that was extremely flexible, allowed airflow, was washable and was also affordable. So we brought them a material that was originally developed for the construction industry – a filament that is used to hold together cables inside skyscrapers. That is a testament to what Material ConneXion is all about – a material developed for the construction industry became the signature element of a line of best-selling footwear.”

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Behind the libraries there’s a team of materials scientists and specialists – as well as designers – who scour the world looking for new materials, and they are headed by Dr Andrew Dent. “I am a materials scientist who came to the US after my PhD,” he says. “I saw a flyer for Material ConneXion on a friend’s coffee table and thought ‘you know what, I’m getting tired of pure research, I’m interested in this’.” He called Caniato, who said that they weren’t really interested, so he called again. And again. And finally he was offered an interview. “I’ve been with the company for fifteen years now,” he says. “It has become my life.”

When he started, the library was organised using bins of materials which members could rummage through, but that was soon changed to the tabular display system the library uses today. “The display system was a very big change,” he says. “We now also have an international footprint, so we’ve translated all our information into several languages, and I’ve also overseen ensuring that all

the libraries around the world are stocked with the latest materials. What was interesting for me was learning how far we could go with innovative materials in the library. Everything in there is commercially available, but it also has to be useful to our clients – it’s the more creative, visual and tactile nature of a business.” That means that in the automotive industry, for example, it’s more about headlinings, dashboards, switchgear and buttons than engines. “I realised that all the materials have to be applicable in some way to our clients’ industries, and they are consumer-facing – everything from automotive to yachts, fashion to footwear, consumer electronics to furniture,” he explains. “We have highly technical materials but they have to have potential applications in those industries. We like to educate but we also understand it has to be usable.”

“It’s all about trying to present these materials to creative people and then helping them to decide how to use them” Michele Caniato

Part of that includes using in-house designers to demonstrate potential applications of a material to clients, but it also involves monitoring the fashion, design and furniture industries, for example, to see what the trends are and also how people are using even basic materials in unusual ways. “I don’t class myself as a creative person,” Dent admits, “and I don’t think any scientist would, but it’s our knowledge of what a material can do that allows us to extrapolate what we could do with a raw material. Then you need to add that to a client’s ideas about what they are trying to achieve, because it’s not always a product – sometimes they want to engage their customers in a certain way, through an experience or a response. Sometimes it’s about solving for an experience rather than a product.” For Caniato, one of the biggest changes that the Material ConneXion libraries have engendered is in the way products are conceived. “I think more and more what I see as part of the ‘creation’ of product is that before,

creative teams had an idea and then looked for materials to put a shell around that idea,” he says. “Now I see companies starting with the materials and then engineering those materials into products.” It suggests a move toward the ultimate in creativity – a little like using building blocks as a child, where the base materials provided the foundation for creativity that was only limited by your imagination. “We have clients like Philippe Starck,” Caniato continues. “He comes to our library four or five times a year and he looks at the library from exactly that point of view. He looks at what the material is and then thinks about what he can do with that material. Whereas before there was design and then the materials followed the design, now more and more materials equal design and are becoming a critical part of the design process.”

new material or an old material that had been treated in new ways,” Caniato explains. “There was no secret formula on what the right material was and we never looked at materials with specific applications in mind. It was all about all about trying to present these materials to creative people and then helping them to decide how to use them.” Covering everything from textiles, glass and metals to ceramics, polymers and beyond, the library remains as diverse as ever. “I see that as the beauty of Material ConneXion,” Caniato concludes. “I call us the Switzerland of materials in the sense that we are not financially involved with any of the material manufacturers – there’s no fee to be in the library – and we choose materials simply because we think they are innovative.” A library, one might say, but not done by the book.

Twenty years on, the underlying philosophy of the library remains the same. “What we were originally looking for was anything that was on the edge either in terms of a

B+V = inspiring innovation

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The Legend of Steinway Craftsmanship

If classical music had a soul, some might argue, then at least part of it would reside in the northern German port of Hamburg. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where the renowned instrument manufacturer Steinway & Sons makes its legendary pianos and grand pianos.

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By Julian Bohne

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More than 95 per cent of performers playing with the world's most prestigious

Opening pages and right: The beauty outside and in... the cast iron plate sits tightly inside the rim of a Steinway piano. Below, right: A Steinway grand piano in high contrast.

orchestras chose a Steinway in the 2014/2015 concert season.

different, and each one comes with its own distinct character, as Wunstorf puts it. But they also have things in common. “No Steinway should limit its player,” the chief voicer says in a pleasant and reposeful voice. “It mustn't present him with any boundaries. Be it quiet or loud, ugly or beautiful – a Steinway has to be able behave exactly like the person playing it wants it to.”

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Wiebke Wunstorf knows exactly what she wants to hear. As chief voicer for Steinway & Sons, Wunstorf has the ultimate say over whether the upright and grand pianos made by the company at its factory in the northern German city of Hamburg produce the sound they're so revered for among pianists and concert audiences around the world and are therefore fit to be released for sale. The tonal qualities Wunstorf is after are, among others, brilliance, power and clarity. To achieve them she only has her two ears and three decades of experience to fall back on. Because voicing a piano or grand piano is decidedly different from tuning it: there are no gauges or measuring devices that one could rely on for help. “The Steinway sound is about tonal colour, and that can't be objectively measured,” Wunstorf explains.

In her small soundproofed booth on the top floor of the Hamburg factory, Wunstorf carefully puts the finishing touches on each instrument made by the hundreds of craftspeople working below her. By this stage each instrument will already have gone through the hands of Wunstorf's three junior voicers in their adjoining booths. One by one she strikes each of the instrument's 88 keys a number times, listening intently. If a note isn't to her liking she treats the felt of its corresponding hammer with a tool bearing several tiny needles, softening it until she's satisfied with the result.

Wunstorf followed her father and her brother into the company: she was the first woman to apprentice as a piano builder at Steinway. Before taking over as chief voicer in 2012, she'd worked as a junior voicer under her predecessor for 30 years and during that time, in her own words, she slowly “grew into her job.” One of the three junior voicers she is training has already been unofficially designated her successor and is acting chief voicer when Wunstorf is away.

It's the tiniest nuances that the chief voicer has to pay attention to, ones that an untrained ear will be unable to pinpoint. Yet, it isn't her ears that Wunstorf says she relies on the most. “My most important assets are my strength of nerve and my courage”, she says. “It takes a lot of nerve to make the instruments produce those unpleasant sounds that I don't actually want to hear but that I must eradicate. At the same time I have to be courageous enough to sign off on instruments that I may not personally like the sound of but that still have the desired sound. I am constantly re-evaluating myself and I always have to put my own work into question – that takes a lot of strength.”

After a twelve-month construction process whose meticulous accuracy and millimetre precision leaves almost nothing to chance, the job of the voicer seems abstract and even ethereal in comparison. While the exact shape and size of every single component in a Steinway – as well as its position in relation to all other components – is a matter of specific definition and measurement, its characteristic sound is not. Every instrument is a little

The company was founded in 1853 in New York by the German émigré Heinrich E. Steinweg, under the anglicised name Steinway. The piano maker was a highly creative innovator in his field, winning several prestigious prizes in the firm's first few years. The popularity of his instruments quickly spiralled, and in 1880 – nine years after the death of Steinway – the company returned to its founder's homeland with the opening of a factory in Hamburg to serve the

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European market. The site in Bahrenfeld, a modest industrial borough in the northwest of Germany's second city, was purpose-built in the 1920s, allowing Steinway to increase production and making it one of the first companies to set up in the area. To this day around 300 employees manufacture 7 grand piano models – including the company's flagship D-274 concert grand piano – as well as two upright piano models at the site. A total of around 1,200 instruments leave the factory every year. The iconic oval-shaped “Steinway & Sons – New York, Hamburg” imprint that's featured on every instrument made by the company has long been considered the mark of excellence in the field of keyboard instruments. According to figures compiled by the company itself, more than 95 per cent of performers playing with the world's most prestigious orchestras chose a Steinway in the 2014/2015 concert season. Ask them why and there's a good chance they'll say it's the warmth of the instruments' sound and the richness of their tone that makes them second to none.

A grand piano consists of around 12,000 individual pieces, 85 per cent of them made from the finest woods including fir, maple, mahogany and whitewood.

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Top: The iconic oval-shaped Steinway & Sons logo. Bottom: A soundboard is crafted in the workshop. Next page: Stringing a piano.

Left: After the gluing process, the rims of the pianos are dried upright in a conditioning room.

The rim consists of an inner and an outer section and is composed of up to 20 layers of maple and mahogany. First Reißig selects the individual sheets of wood and stacks them in the desired order. He makes sure that each layer is positioned so that the grain is set horizontally, a feature that measurably improves tonal projection. Next, the wood receives a final planing. The layers are then separated and individually coated with glue. As mundane as that may sound the task requires all of Reißig's experience and professionalism. It's the part of his job where he can least afford to take his eye off the ball. “The composition as well as the temperature of the glue have to be just right”, Reißig says. “The same goes for the application of the glue to the wood – it has to have a certain thickness.” The sound of a Steinway is the sum of many parts: a grand piano consists of approximately 12,000 individual pieces, 85 per cent of them made from the finest woods including fir, maple, mahogany and whitewood. It takes around a year until an instrument is finished, not counting the average 24 months of dehumidification that every piece of wood used in a Steinway has to undergo. More than 125 patents that have been registered by the firm over the years are applied throughout the construction process. 80 per cent of the work is done by hand by highly skilled craftspeople with decades of experience. Fluctuation is exceptionally low among the workforce and it's not uncommon for employees to spend their entire working lives at the firm.

If Reißig gets it right then the result is set to outlive him by many years, another evident source of pride for the craftsman. “Our instruments are built to last 100 years and even longer so the rim has to be faultless”, says Reißig. “Any problem that isn't detected here will be carried on through the entire rest of the construction.” Thankfully, mistakes hardly ever happen. Reißig credits his fellow craftsmen. “I work in a great team – there are six of us and we understand each other intuitively. We have a lot of experience between us, and ultimately, that is the most important ingredient in what we do.”

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Steinway grand pianos are built from the outside to the inside, meaning that the first part that's made for every instrument is the rim. It's what Steinway calls the characteristically contoured outer shell in which the soundboard, the plate, the strings, the hammers and most other parts are housed. In Bahrenfeld the rims are bent into shape in Detlef Reißig's workshop on the ground floor of the factory. A carpenter by trade, the 63-year-old has been with the company for 36 years. Reißig is a hulking man with a buoyant character, a quick wit, a wide smile and a penchant to joke. His work however is anything but a laughing matter to him – talking to him it quickly becomes clear that he takes a lot of pride in what he does. “I work in the nursery for our instruments”, Reißig says with a conspiratorial sparkle in his eye. “This is where each of them gets its shape.”

Once the right amount of glue has been applied the layers are once again stacked up. They are then bent into the desired shape as a single continuous piece in a purpose-built rim bending press. The process is unique to the company and, along with the press, was invented in 1878 by C.F. Theodore Steinway, one of the sons of the company founder. It was patented two years later and turned out to be a genuine revolution in the world of piano making – previously, rims had been made of separate pieces held together with joints. The Steinway method has gone unchanged since its conception and is still strictly adhered to today. “When Steinway came up with this design in the late 19th century, it was already near perfect”, says Reißig. “We are proud of our Steinway. Why change a winning formula?”

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When they leave the gluing presses after three hours the rims are stored upright in a conditioning room, where a constant temperature and humidity are maintained. Depending on their size, the rims are left to settle into their new shape here for up to 16 weeks. The bending process may be very complex, but it results in rims that are under considerable tension, which will later help transfer the vibrations of the strings to the entire instrument without distortion – it's an important contribution to building the perfect resonating body. It's also a vital precondition for the finished instrument to be able to maintain an ultra-high overall string tension almost indefinitely.

Below: Each detail of a Steinway is crafted with meticulous attention to detail. Right: Weighing the keys ensures they have equal downweight and that each returns at exactly the same speed.

The rim also serves as a receptacle for what's arguably the most important part of each instrument: The soundboard. Referred to by some as the instrument's soul, the soundboard is made of the extremely resonant wood of the Sitka spruce. It can be compared to a loudspeaker: it amplifies the vibrations of the strings, transferring them to the surrounding air and thereby giving each instrument its voice. The soundboard is glued tightly onto the inner rim, a prime example for Steinway's “wood to wood” construction method, whereby as few metal parts are used as possible. A significant portion of the characteristic Steinway tone stems from the interplay of rim and soundboard as well as from the fact that each soundboard is custommade to fit its rim perfectly.

The quality requirements applied to the wood of the soundboard are unforgivingly high with a vetting process so rigorous that only around one in five boards that come out of storage after the two-year drying period actually make it past the critical eye of Claus Samman. The 57-year old has worked at Steinway for 29 years and he is one of the craftsmen responsible for soundboard construction at the Bahrenfeld factory. Samman goes about his task with a diligence that's instantly visible: this isn't so much a job to him as it is a vocation: “I've become acquainted with what I do to such an extent that I feel that it's my responsibility rather than my profession.” On a table the same size and shape as the board he's working on, Samman carefully lays out the pieces he is taking into consideration. He's a placid man, a quality that's reflected in the serenity with which he goes about his work. With exceeding care and a meticulous gaze Samman observes the wood before him. Knotholes, resin, minuscule tears, discolorations, or an uneven grain – if a plank shows even the tiniest of imperfections, he discards it with a mercilessness that isn't in the slightest betrayed by the calmness of his voice. “I look for straight grain, fineness of wood as well as colour. The annual rings in the wood have to be as even and as closely spaced as possible.” The straightness and fineness of the grain allow the sound-producing energy to spread out over the soundboard more efficiently. When a key is struck the resulting tone is projected onto the soundboard, where it spreads out in all directions towards the rim. Once it reaches the hard wood of the rim it is reflected back towards the body of the soundboard, where it resonates. An important factor in this dynamic is the soundboard's unique shape, which continuously tapers towards the edges from a thickness of around eight to nine millimetres at the centre. This way the soundboard requires less energy to vibrate as the energy travels outwards.

“Feeling, instinct, a sense of touch, and a photographic memory are what you need for this job”

Ulf Wolter

“Doing this job you have to really know about wood”, Samman says. It's a competence he first learned during his training as a carpenter. But there's more. “You also need a certain eye. What we do here may look easy, but I have seen a lot of people fail at this particular task.” Yet another skill required for the job is the ability to keep a secret. The exact method used by Steinway in the construction of its soundboards remains undisclosed to the present day. Besides being famed for their sound, instruments built by Steinway are also known for possessing a certain touch – their keys are sensitive and highly responsive, effortlessly supporting every mode of playing from soft and sustained to powerful staccato.

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The secret behind the unmistakable playing feel delivered by a Steinway lies in the perfect synchronisation of the approximately 7,500 individual parts that make up the key action mechanism, the assembly responsible for turning keystrokes into notes by way of feltcovered wooden hammers that hit the strings. Achieving the perfect setup of this mechanism requires several thousand individual operations, which in their sum are called pre-regulation.

Right: A stringed grand piano, ready to be played

“Feeling, instinct, a sense of touch, and a photographic memory are what you need for this job”, says Ulf Wolter, who is one of several craftsmen and –women working in the preregulation workshop on the first floor of the Bahrenfeld factory. Music is deeply ingrained in Wolter, who has been playing the piano since he was 11 years old. Even the frame of his eyeglasses is adorned with a succession of notes and clefs.

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In order for all 88 keys to depress and return in exactly the same way Wolter painstakingly weighs each one with the help of small weights. The 52-year-old also tests, and, if required, adjusts, the resistance posed to each key by a tiny patch of felt lining the minuscule slit by which it slides over a metal pin to keep it in place horizontally. The keys and the hammers have to be precisely equidistant and the latter have to impact the strings at exactly the same point. The job requires a consistently high level of concentration. At the same time however Wolter has to use his time efficiently in order to be able to manage the thousands of separate work steps necessary for the task.

“You need a sharp eye and a reliable sense of proportion. This job is all about laying the foundation for the playing feel and if that isn't right, then nothing is,” says Wolter of the tedious process, in which the tiniest details are of the greatest importance. Consequently, preregulation is the department in the Steinway factory where the instruments remain the longest. A veteran like Ulf Wolter, who has worked for the company for 26 years, needs approximately 20 hours, or between two and three workdays to completely set up the key

action mechanism in one instrument. “The same task takes newcomers to our department between 70 and 100 hours,” he says. “Only after around six months will that time have come down to the roughly 20 hours that me and my colleagues need.” Any instrument that is released from the meticulous hands of Wolter and his colleagues has not only gained its signature Steinway touch – it has also received the ability to produce sounds: although it hasn't yet been tuned the instrument is technically playable after preregulation is complete. At this stage, the only thing that's missing is the instrument's voice – it's where Wiebke Wunstorf and her team of three come into play. There are three key elements at play in the construction of Steinway’s instruments: the high quality of the raw materials, the long tradition of the company and its construction methods, and the dedication and experience of its craftspeople. It requires the union of all three for the vision once set out by the firm's founder Henry E. Steinway to be fulfilled: “To build the best piano possible.”

SCULPTURAL JEWELS TO ILLUMINATE ANY INTERIOR The beauty, individuality and unrivalled craftsmanship of Crystal Caviar glass art enrich the world’s finest residences, yachts and hotels. C RYSTA L CAV I A R. E U

The world’s largest one-piece Bohemian crystal sculpture. Artist: Beranek

CHANDELIERS

SCULPTURE

BESPOKE LIGHTING

MIRRORS

ARCHITECTURAL GLASS

A new twist on nuclear power Blohm+Voss

By Edwin Cartlidge

Engineering + Exploration

An unusual fusion reactor starting up in northern Germany might yield tomorrow’s ultimate energy source

It’s easy to see why physicists have been trying for over 60 years to tame the process that powers the Sun: nuclear fusion. When two very light atomic nuclei fuse, as they do inside stars, they convert some of their mass to energy (nuclear fission, in contrast, involves heavy nuclei breaking up). Not only is the amount of energy released enormous, but the kinds of nuclei that undergo fusion are in plentiful supply here on Earth. Given that fusion reactions also release no greenhouse gases and create little radioactive waste, the potential for a new type of energy source is clear. The word “potential” is crucial. All nuclei are positively charged and so repel one another. To have enough energy to fuse they must be heated to 100 million degrees. But since no material container can withstand such extreme temperatures, the nuclei must be held in magnetic fields. The nut that physicists have still to crack is how to create fields that trap enough nuclei for a long enough time such that they generate a net power output.

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Left: Shaping up nicely: A section of the Wendelstein 7-X plasma vessel prior to installation. All photos: IPP

Enter Wendelstein 7-X. Located at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald on Germany’s Baltic coast, this “stellarator” is a strange and complex beast. On the inside it looks like a kind of alien metallic worm joined head to toe, its 50 superconducting coils and enclosed steel vessel arranged in a loop and apparently twisted at random. In fact, all of its components have been designed, built and assembled with millimetre precision, so that its magnetic field has just the right shape to keep ultra-hot fusion fuel suspended within the vessel indefinitely. If this 750-tonne piece of German engineering performs as expected, it could provide the blueprint for commercial fusion reactors.

The idea with stellarators is to shape and position the magnets such that no transformer is needed. In principle, therefore, they could operate continuously and efficiently. But plasma physics is unforgiving, and even minute imperfections in a reactor’s magnetic field can lead to plasma leaks. Although stellarators were first proposed in the 1950s, it was decades before computers became powerful enough to allow scientists to precisely trace out the ideal magnetic-field geometry. With the geometry established, the design for Wendelstein 7-X followed. Actually building the machine, however, proved a mammoth task. Each of its parts had to be positioned with an accuracy of 1.5 mm, even though many of them—such as its coils—weigh several tonnes a piece. Then the parts had to be welded together, but welding tends to cause shrinkage. When welding the ports used to observe and interact with the plasma, Wegener and colleagues discovered that the laser-based system they used to monitor the welding was not up to scratch and that the ports ended up 8mm out of place. “This was one of our nasty lessons learned,” he says. Standing in Wendelstein’s control room in February surrounded by researchers and other politicians, German chancellor Angela Merkel helped scientific operations begin when she pushed a button that sent a powerful microwave pulse into the machine. The pulse heated up a tiny amount of hydrogen gas, so creating the state of matter needed for fusion reactions: a plasma, in which nuclei and electrons roam free. A flash of blue light appearing on a monitor behind Merkel confirmed that Wendelstein 7-X was indeed ready for business.

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“Many people doubted that Wendelstein could be built,” says Lutz Wegener, who is in charge of the reactor’s assembly. “They said that its strange shape might be too difficult to realise. But we have shown that it can be done.”

Creating the perfect field Conventional fusion reactors, known as tokamaks, have a simpler geometry than Wendelstein but suffer from a fundamental flaw. They confine plasma within a doughnut-shaped vessel around which standard-shaped coils are positioned at regular intervals. But because the coils are closer to one another on the inside of the doughnut, the field they produce is curved and uneven and causes the plasma to drift out of the vessel. Overcoming this problem involves creating helical field lines by using a transformer to set up electrical currents within the plasma itself. Those currents come in pulses, so reducing average power output and making such a device potentially uneconomic.

Thinking ahead Overcoming these problems as they cropped up led to major delays and extra costs. In fact, the reactor took nine years longer to complete than originally envisaged and its price tag nearly doubled—to €1 billion. That increase is loose change compared to the ballooning price of ITER, the €15 billion tokamak being built in the south of France that was supposed to have cost €5 billion. Wendelstein’s woes nevertheless prompted an overhaul of the project to ensure more industry-like work practices, according to scientific director Thomas Klinger.

Although stellarators were first proposed in the 1950s, it was decades before computers became powerful enough to allow scientists to precisely trace out the ideal magnetic-field geometry.

Once it was assembled and commissioned, Wendelstein 7-X eventually fired up its first plasma—a helium one—in December last year. Having repeated the trick with hydrogen, researchers have now switched off the machine and are adding heat-extractors. The plan is to gradually ramp up the heating power and plasma duration until, in about 2020, the machine holds plasmas for half an hour at a time. Although the 30m3 plasma will be too small to generate power, Klinger says it will still be large enough to predict the performance of an energy-producing device. David Campbell, head of ITER’s science and operations department, points out that tokamaks are well ahead of stellarators at present, noting that ITER, due to switch on in the mid-2020s, should produce ten times the energy it consumes. He also cautions that, as with any fusion reactor, Wendelstein’s actual performance may not match its theoretical one. Nevertheless, he supports the current research. “Even if the first power plant is a tokamak, Wendelstein’s results might mean stellarators prevail in the long term,” he says. “It is good to keep our options open.”

Top left: A section of the Wendelstein 50, which if it performs as expected, will provide a blueprint for commercial fusion reactors. Below, left: Wendelstein's 50 superconducting coils are arranged to twist the plasma into just the right shape. Below: A missing section of the device's thermally-insulating outer layer reveals the plasma vessel and surrounding magnets during assembly.

B+V = boundless energy

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Clearly

Engineering + Innovation

Since the turn of the millennium, one engineering firm in London has pushed the boundaries of the capabilities of glass, and changed how we understand structures, architecture and design in the process.

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By Don Hoyt Gorman

Genius

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Eckersley Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Callaghan engage in a series of experiments with glass, exploring different forms and ultimately, the actual envelope of buildings themselves. These investigations, and Appleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s support of them, culminated in one of the most iconic buildings of the 21st century: Apple's 5th

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Avenue cube store in Manhattan.

Opening pages: The feature glass staircase at Apple Zorlu, Istanbul, is one of the latest developments in the brand’s retail identity. Photo: Apple Left: James O'Callaghan, co-founder of structural and facade engineering consultancy Eckersley O'Callaghan Below, left: Apple Zorlu, Istanbul, was engineered by Eckersley O'Callaghan and opened in 2014.

Inspired by the potential he saw, 13 years ago he set out on his own, forming an engineering practice with Brian Eckersley, and focused on the opportunities of structural glass engineering through his own company, Eckersley O’Callaghan. Some of the most cutting-edge design and engineering projects anywhere on Earth today are using glass, a material most of us know as one that is both transparent and inherently fragile. But since the turn of the millennium, one engineering firm in London has been pushing the boundaries of what glass is able to do, and changing how we understand structures, architecture and design in the process. James O’Callaghan has been fascinated by glass since he first began to understand its properties as an engineer while working with the pioneering consultancy Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners in London in the early 1990s. Tim Macfarlane’s interest was in exploring how glass could evolve from simply windows to the walls, beams and columns of the structure itself. With the architect Rick Mather, he designed seminal projects including an all-glass rear extension to a private home in Hampstead in the early 1990s.

That changed when O’Callaghan was introduced to what would become the largest, richest and most technologically sophisticated company in the world: Apple. “Meeting Apple was really a case of being in the right place at the right time,” he explains. “I had been working on the refurbishment of the Corning Museum of Glass’ Rakow Research Library in upstate New York. At the same time, the architects we were partnered with, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, had been approached by Apple to develop a design for Apple’s soon-to-be launched retail enterprise.”

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O’Callaghan was with Dewhurst Macfarlane up until the early 2000s, working through a series of projects in which glass was deployed structurally.

Starting with Modernism in the 1950s, architects and engineers began using large panes of glass in high-tech architectural environments such as the Centre Pompidou, the La Villette facades in Paris and the Lloyds Building in London. Designers Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers had recognized that glass had a precision and engineering-like nature to it that they could design into their structures. By the first years of the 2000s, there was a lot of glass in buildings, but it was being held in place and supported by the structure around it, rather than acting as the structure itself.

Left: Apple Glass Cube on 5th Avenue, New York was rebuilt in 2011 (shown) to collate the latest advances in glass technology. The original was built in 2006. Below, right: Apple SoHo, New York, was the first glass project by the collaboration between Apple and James O’Callaghan.

Glass was the right solution for Apple’s SoHo staircase project: it provided the transparency the space required. “One shouldn’t do glass just because you want to do glass; you do glass because you have a reason—and the reason nine times out of ten is that it’s transparent,” O’Callaghan says.

B+V = transparent solutions

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For Apple’s first store, on Green Street in SoHo, New York, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson had come up with a zonal approach to retail in which different areas of the store served different needs. The problem was that the central staircase would obscure the visual logic of the space, so the concept of some kind of transparent solution was suggested. The architects turned to O’Callaghan. “I proposed making the whole thing out of glass—the steps, the balustrade, everything,” he explains. “And though we didn’t precisely know how we would do it, off we went to make it work.”

O’Callaghan insists that working with glass as a structure is simply engineering. With the experience he and his team already had, they were confident they could design glass to safely accommodate people, to be robust and last and be able to be easily maintained. “We were able to really inspire the client—a company embedded in innovation and ideas—to invest in structural, architectural, designed glass features as part of their design aesthetic,” he says.

“In the case of Apple’s SoHo store, having a substantial structure in the middle of the store that was transparent meant that shoppers within the store could visually navigate themselves to different solution zones. It fundamentally helped the retail process.” And from this first structural glass project, Apple’s aesthetic grew. Quickly, Eckersley O’Callaghan were engaged in a series of experiments with glass and different materials, exploring different forms (a spiral staircase for instance) and ultimately, the actual envelope of the building itself. These investigations, and Apple’s support of them culminated in one of the most iconic buildings of the 21st century: the 5th Avenue cube in Manhattan. The first version in 2006 was made of 106 panels of glass; the technologically-upgraded current Mark II building is composed of 15 individual panels. “Pretty quickly, glass structures were recognized as being something that was part of Apple’s retail brand,” O’Callaghan says. In their design, manufacture and detailing, Apple Stores communicate an understanding of very high quality materials, whether wood or steel or glass.

These desires for radical glass structures—and the budgets to find ways to fulfil them—have meant that the glass technology and engineering we undertake has leapt into the superyacht world.

Apple supported Eckersley O’Callaghan’s incessant drive to test their ideas and understanding of glass. That investment in learning and understanding the material’s engineering properties and potential has in turn dramatically influenced the glassmaking industry’s ability to deliver precision-designed structural glass components. Today, even technically advanced and highly regulated projects like luxury superyachts are benefitting from the work that’s gone into the research and development of glass by Apple and Eckersley O’Callaghan. “Getting into the marine industry was not by design,” O’Callaghan explains of his company’s marine projects. “It came about because of an opportunity to be involved in the design and delivery of the 79m Feadship Venus in 2012. Transferring our structural glass expertise, originally developed for buildings, to superyachts felt like a natural step.” Glass fabrication technology had moved on significantly since the Apple projects of the early 2000s, so the possibility for glass to be used in a more ambitious way was at some point going to find its way into projects driven by the spirit of innovation at the very high end of luxury design and engineering.

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“At the top end, superyacht clients want yachts that are bigger, faster, more efficient, and lately, more transparent with more natural light,” O’Callaghan explains. “Those desires—and the budgets to find ways to fulfil them—have meant that the glass technology and engineering we undertake has leapt into the superyacht world. We’ve followed the trend and we’ve helped inform clients, shipyards and designers to push it along.”

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Since Venus, O’Callaghan has been talking to shipyards and designers about how glass can replace structures aboard yachts in new ways. “Windows can be larger and take more load because we can design them and our fabrication partners can make them to the highest possible standards. We can demonstrate the maths, show how these structures are robust and safe and prove that they fail in a predictable manner, just as is required with steel or aluminium or any other material aboard a yacht.”

Right: Sky Pool, London, is the latest of a string of innovative projects by engineers Eckersley O'Callaghan.

O’Callaghan is considering coming up with a yacht concept to convey some of the ideas he and his team have. “There’s a variety of different things coming through the design world which we’re testing from a design perspective and thinking about,” O’Callaghan explains. “There’s more desire to integrate glass into superyacht design, though so far we haven’t seen anything that has gone beyond the ridiculous. The main challenge we

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Right: Dilworth Park, Philadelphia. Photo: James Ewing

see is balancing an owner’s desire for more light—which means more energy which means more heat which can mean more discomfort. Glass is definitely not the solution for many, many things. We are clear about that when we are presented with ideas.” Today, Eckersley O’Callaghan’s practice is investigating how composites interact with glass and how structures can span longer while being thinner and lighter. To that end, the firm is conducting research with thin glass (less than two millimetres thick).

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“Gorilla® Glass is a very interesting material in that it’s very strong, very fine, but also very thin and not very stiff; so what do you do with it?” O’Callaghan asks. “If you bend it into a three dimensional form like a saddle or another curved form, it inherently gets a lot of stiffness. Rather than thinking of glass as a flat window, what other elements could we create? What about furniture? What about canopy-type structures? Once we introduce form to it, we can achieve structures and properties we would never be able to achieve with normal flat glass, which is too thick. So there’s a whole avenue of design concepts that suits the material.”

Technology is also changing how glass works. O’Callaghan points out that current LCD technology embedded within thin glass is the kind of dynamic material that can control light energy to a level of sophistication above current on/ off frosted privacy glass. “We are looking at glass solutions that adapt to control solar gain and diffuse light so you can avoid mechanical blind and shutter systems,” he says.

“Because new regulations on energy use are huge constraints on new building design, how we control glass’ energy transfer has to improve,” O’Callaghan says. “Embedded LCDs, printings and coatings are the focus now in order to have the tools to be able to manage the wold of sustainability and energy control while continuing to deliver ever larger glass structures.” As O’Callaghan explains, his firm’s experience with glass as a structure is such that if anyone in the world requires a structural glass project, they are very likely to be asked to engineer it. With large, exciting and highly sophisticated projects currently underway all over the world—including the façade of the new Chelsea Football Stadium at Stamford Bridge in London and a mind-bending sky-pool spanning two residential towers just down the road at Nine Elms, Eckersley O’Callaghan continue to innovate on what’s possible within structural engineering and design.

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ECO Engineering + Innovation

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Built by Blohm+Voss, one of the most iconic yachts of all time celebrates her twenty-fifth year since launch in 1991.

Opening pages: ECO, an outstanding iconic design by Martin Francis for a visionary owner. Left: The ultimate super-fast superyacht; with gas turbines driving water jets, she makes 35 knots.

Building and delivering a thoroughly innovative piece of prototype engineering and high luxury to a visionary owner is somewhat of a Blohm+Voss specialty. Twenty-five years ago in 1991, Blohm+Voss hull number 956 emerged from her build hall in Hamburg and wowed the world with her staggering looks. The design was by Martin Francis for the pioneering yachtsman Emilio Azcรกrraga, and ECO, as she was called then, was a masterpiece of advanced engineering and build quality. Her long, thin hull was designed for speed, and her pyramidal superstructure and convex windows set her looks apart from anything that had ever come before. Indeed, she is without doubt one of the iconic superyachts, a testament to the vision of her owner and designer, and one of the jewels in the Blohm+Voss fleet of extraordinary superyachts.

Above: ECOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s radically curved windows and overall design remain instantly recognisable. Below: Still one of the most beautiful yachts afloat, she is the optimum speed-for-size.

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Social diary

ART Marine relaunch party October 2015 The Middle Eastâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest and best-known 360Â° leisure marine enterprise celebrated its relaunch in Egypt with the Ferretti Group at a party at Auoroa Restaurant. Managers of the biggest marine brands including Ferretti, Pershing, Itama, Riva and Blohm+Voss, as well as maritime leisure aficionados flew in for the celebration. Images courtesy of ART Marine

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ShowBoats Design Awards February 2016 The 2016 ShowBoats Design Awards,Â sponsored by Blohm+Voss, was held in the mountains of Austria. Sixteen golden Neptune awards presented by double Olympic gold medalist, Shirley Robertson OBE, in front of a sell-out audience of superyacht owners, designers and icons of the superyacht industry from around the globe.

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All photos courtesy of Boat International Media

The Superyacht Design Symposium February 2016 The Superyacht Design Symposium 2016, sponsored by Blohm+Voss, brought together some of the biggest names in superyacht design with experts from the wider design community for two days of workshops, panel discussions and prize-giving for yacht design. The ShowBoats Design Awards were held during the event. All images courtesy of Boat International Media

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B+V Ski Cup, KitzbĂźhel February 2016 Blohm+Voss hosted the 3rd annual Ski Cup in KitzbĂźhel, Austria, earlier this year. Skiers from the superyacht community took to the slopes of the famous Gaisberg World Cup Race Course. The slalom competition was contested by skiers of all levels and provided a day of adrenalinfuelled entertainment and wonderful memories.

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All photos courtesy of Blohm+Voss

Superyacht DESIGN Week June 2016 Held at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, the fourth annual event, sponsored by Blohm+Voss, showcased innovative design, provided workshops on the latest topics and highlighted artisans. It invited participants to take part in discussions with key industry players, exploring opportunities to work together to build the future of superyacht design. All images courtesy of Superyacht Events

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Take delivery of an iconic Blohm+Voss yacht in 2018

T +49 (0) 40 3119 1200 yachtsales@blohmvoss.com blohmvossyachts.com/bv80

Following an extensive period of detailed engineering, the new 80m yacht from Blohm+Voss is already under construction. Delivery to her new owner will be possible in the winter 2018.

Blohm+Voss. Expect the exceptional.

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