Lujac Desautel has designed a yacht that is conceptually so obvious, it’s hard to say why it doesn’t exist yet. An architecture student at San Francisco California College of the Arts, Desautel designed this yacht as an entry to a young boat designers competition. This Young Designer of the Year Finalist (Boat International 2014) touts Legos and the natural landscape as his inspiration for Salt, the name he’s given this luxury glass-hull yacht. “The beauty of Legos is the infinite amount of possibilities that are created with just a few pieces,” Desautel describes on his home page.
From working on luxury yachts between semesters, Desautel noted that being in one did not feel like you were actually even in the ocean, but inside a nice, moving room. Why wouldn’t you want to feel like you were one with the ocean on a trip such as one on a yacht?
The Salt yacht is a totally different take on traditional yachts, resembling a modernist design. It’s reminiscent of Philip Johnson’s almost completely transparent home, Glass House, but it’s a glass boat. The hull of the yacht is cut out in order to maximize surrounding views of the ocean. The completely glass-made façade of the yacht would be able to slide right open for the deck to turn into a beachside cabana, really connecting passengers to the beauty of the sea instantly.
Architecturally and aesthetically, Salt is similar to another of his glass yacht designs, Glass. It features a simple glass rectangle on top of a hull. Its overall structural design is borrowed from Water Step Wells of New Delhi, India to replace the hulls, as well as 17th century Japanese Red Seal ships for the masts—“adaptive features,” Desautel describes on his website. “Salt can be thought of as an evolution of these preconceived ideas.”
Salt is designed to be 55-meters, and is sure to become a project for the wealthiest of the wealthy to fund. It’s a gloriously simple idea meant to be simple for better functionality. Yachts tend to change owners often, so its simplicity allows for the new owner to customize to their tastes. As magnificent as Salt is, it isn’t quite ready for reality. Desautel does not have an engineering background, so his work did not necessarily take into account the resiliency of the glass structures against an ocean’s intangibly, formidable currents. That being said, the tasks of mechanical engineering logistics are up for grabs for anyone up for the challenge.
