Eden was designed by Wilson Butler Architects, Patricia Urquiola and Variety Worldwide
By
Rebecca Gibson |
Celebrity Cruises is to introduce Eden, a three-deck dining and entertainment venue with live plants and almost 7,000 square feet of glass, at the aft of its newest ship, Celebrity Edge.
Bigger than the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the Van Gogh Museum atrium in Amsterdam, Eden was designed by Scott Butler AIA, founding partner of US-based Wilson Butler Architects. The space was inspired by the golden spiral and the Fibonacci sequence, hence it features a 90-metre-long ramp that will enable guests to pass through the venue.
“When creating Eden, my goal was to create a connection to the sea in a space that will stir imaginations and leave lasting memories of the travel experience,” said Butler.
Renowned architect and designer Patricia Urquiola has also supplied her signature furniture for the venue and created some of Eden’s key features. These include the hanging plant pillars and the 18-foot-high live Library of Plants above the Eden Bar, which can be used as fresh ingredients and garnishes for hand-crafted cocktails. This is Urquiola’s first-ever cruise ship project.
"In working on Eden with Celebrity, I wanted to design a dynamic environment that changes from morning to night, so guests experience something new every time they visit,” said Urquiola.
Billed as a place to be ‘Chillful. Playful. Sinful.’, Eden will serve as a place for yoga sessions, reading and breakfast in the morning, and then become a venue for cocktail making classes, wine tasting, enrichment activities and music or aerialist performances in the afternoon.
In the evening, the Eden Restaurant will host ‘Eve at Eden’, a fusion of performance art, culinary exploration and nightlife created by non-traditional theatre and dining company Variety Worldwide. The dinner will be served by characters named Edenists.
“When people think of traditional cruise ship entertainment, there’s a very specific image that people have in mind, but the exciting thing about Eden is we’ve actually been invited to break so many of those rules,” said David Ley, director of Variety Worldwide.
As dinner comes to an end, sensory cues will prompt guests to head back upstairs to the Eden Bar past the Tree of Life – the continuation of the iconic living tree installation onboard Celebrity’s Solstice Class ships.
“Our search for partners who are as passionate about world-class design as Celebrity led us to the incredibly talented Scott Butler and designer extraordinaire Patricia Urquiola, who offered a fresh perspective and keen eye,” said Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, president and CEO at Celebrity Cruises. “The entire space is magical throughout morning, afternoon, and evening when our guests will experience Eve at Eden, an experience produced by the visionary Variety Worldwide and our very own Cornelius Gallagher. They have all created something magical and magnificent.”
Eden is just one of the many elements on Celebrity Edge that has been designed to achieve Celebrity’s aim of reimagining what it means to be connected to the sea.
“Eden, like so many aspects of Celebrity Edge, represents a unique advance in cruise ship design,” said Richard Fain, chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. “It’s an experience that's multi-faceted and innovative. Connectivity to the ocean is one of the most exciting hallmarks of Edge Class, and with more glass than any other room at sea, Eden embodies that outward-facing concept beautifully.”
Celebrity Edge will sail her inaugural cruise on 16 December 2018.