Cruise & Ferry Review - Autumn/Winter 2021

1 4 6 YSA Design carefully considered every piece of furniture and decorative element to optimise space when designing the Explorer staterooms onboard Viking Idun INTERV IEW Creative solutions Jan Krefting outlines how YSA Design overcomes the challenges of river cruise ship design and explains why he thinks the sector will recover faster than the ocean cruise industry A fter accumulating 13 years’ experience of designing spaces onboard ocean-going passenger vessels, YSA Design (YSA) received its first commission from a river cruise line in 1998. The task was to design the cabins and public spaces onboard Viking River Cruises’ first vessel, the 150-guest Viking Danube. Since then, the river cruise operator has called on YSA’s expertise to design all its vessels built for operation in Europe, Russia, China and Egypt. Thanks largely to this fruitful relationship, YSA now has a wealth of experience in the sector, a varied portfolio of river ship projects and a thorough understanding of the challenges involved in vessel design. The need for space efficiency onboard will always be a significant factor influencing river ship design. According to Jan Krefting, partner and senior architect at YSA, the tension between the demand for larger vessel capacity and the limits of the waterways has become particularly apparent in recent years owing to the consequences of climate change. “In addition to waterway-related size restrictions, river cruise ships face challenges such as changing seasonal water levels, bridges and locks,” he explains. “Although ships have been getting bigger, there are still strict limits on how long, wide, deep and tall they can be – and this has called for creative solutions and a clever use of space.” A vessel featuring a small gym or shallow pool on deck, for example, will require sunshades, but they add height to the ship. “One solution is to reduce the height of the cabins below, but we don’t want guests to feel cramped or claustrophobic,” says Krefting. “A better solution is flexible shading that can be collapsed before the ship passes under a bridge and raised again afterwards. However, these structures also add height and even 100 millimetres in height has an impact for the decks below.” Contemporary projects sometimes require the hull of a river ship to be designed to maximise deck space. Viking “ YSA creates an authentic experience by designing interiors to reflect the culture of the region the ship is cruising in”