Cruise & Ferry Interiors 2021

1 4 5 S ails are the symbol of sailing and are important because they have been able to offer logical solutions in every era. Recently they have also been refined with technology, offering innovative perspectives not only for yachts, but also for cruise and commercial ships. Will sails once again suggest the roadmap for the future? To get out of the trouble we find ourselves in now we need to know how to innovate, with imagination and creativity; but what is the right direction to take? What is happening now already happened half a century ago: what seemed to be the end of an era, the end of the ocean liners, was, instead, the start of the prosperous development of cruise ships. As already happened then, let’s accompany common sense with a little imagination and, perhaps, we will be able to orient ourselves better. The Turtle Ship The development of air transport, as a result of the technological progress triggered by World War II, has penalised passenger maritime connections to the advantage of intercontinental flights. However, this phenomenon did not happen suddenly, but gradually. From the 1950s to the 1970s, aeronautical technology became reliable with the advent of the jet and the dimensional growth of aircraft: from the DC3 to the Jumbo. In the same years, ocean liners tried to counteract this by offering ever faster and more comfortable services like the QE2 and famous Italian liners. In the 1970s, all the splendid, almost new, transatlantic liners lay abandoned or underwent unlikely transformations aimed at cruises. Passenger shipping had entered a crisis. To get out of it, innovative solutions had to be found, both for the ship and for its operational system: a profound evolutionary process, respectful of the experience gained but enriched by the contribution of new skills and much imagination. The first important example, at the end of the 1960s, was offered by a ‘dream team’ of designers led by two great masters, Gio Ponti and Pierluigi Spadolini, and developed by an imaginative student of architecture, Bruna Moresco. DES IGN LEGEND Do sails still make sense? To close this issue of CFI, design legend Vittorio Garroni questions whether sails still make sense for cruise ships of the future Gio Ponti’s proposals for the Turtle Ship were published in 1969