At the Monaco Yacht Show, Feadship unveiled HIVE, a groundbreaking 115-metre concept superyacht designed entirely around human-centric onboard living.
Feadship has revealed HIVE, its latest concept design, during the Monaco Yacht Show. At 115 metres, HIVE is Feadship’s largest concept design to date and explores a new approach to life on board, starting not with a conventional arrangement of spaces, but with the people who use them. Developed by a team of designers from Studio De Voogt, led by Senior Designer Jan Schaffers, together with Feadship’s naval architects and engineering specialists, HIVE combines a radically different approach to space with technologies that can be engineered and built. The concept is being presented privately during the Monaco Yacht Show at the House of Feadship, where invited guests can explore the design through a scale model and discuss the thinking behind HIVE directly with its designer.
Since 2006, Feadship concept designs have looked beyond the conventions of the day to explore how changing lifestyles, emerging technologies and new ideas could shape yachting in the future. Ideas first investigated through these studies have subsequently appeared on Feadships, including hybrid propulsion, new structural applications of glass and alternative fuels. For HIVE, the starting point was life on board. A fictional family of four was developed to give the concept a human context, following the same principle applied to every pure custom Feadship: understanding how the owners live, what matters to them and how they want to spend their time on board before translating those needs into architecture.
A shared heart
Many of the ideas that shaped HIVE emerged through Feadship’s partnership with Boat International for the Young Designer of the Year competition. As part of this programme, finalists Aleksandra Orescanin, Dimitrios Timagenis, Fabio Peduzzi, Melisa Civlez, Lisandro Nicoletti and Oguzhan Akilli were invited to the Netherlands to work alongside designers at Studio De Voogt, gaining first-hand experience of the Feadship design process while bringing their own perspectives to changing expectations of life on board. For HIVE, their discussions repeatedly returned to the idea of a central place where people could come together before moving naturally towards their own pursuits. From this emerged the hive as an organising principle: many different activities coexisting around a shared centre. The social character of the salons of 1930s Paris provided a second influence, inspiring spaces for conversation, culture, entertainment and exchange.
At the heart of HIVE is a vast open space extending across four decks. On main deck it can become an expansive saloon, stage or auditorium, with terraces opening to port and starboard. Curved staircases connect balconies and more intimate spaces above, while service pantries, furniture storage and a green room allow the central space to accommodate anything from family life to performances, lectures and large gatherings. Around this shared heart, HIVE offers very different environments. A two-storey beach lounge leads to water-level dining for 24 or more, while a circular, glass-enclosed foredeck library opens onto a secluded garden. The owner’s deck features a 20-metre pool with Feadship’s patented ContraWave™ technology, extending indoors as a suspended, glass-bottomed infinity pool. An underwater lounge provides an expansive view below the surface, while the observation lounge above has a retractable glass roof for uninterrupted views of the night sky.
A new profile
At 115 metres, HIVE also introduces a new direction in Studio De Voogt’s exterior design language. Her long, low profile develops ideas explored in previous concept designs Pure and C, where rethinking the conventional bridge arrangement opened new possibilities for the yacht’s architecture. On HIVE, a virtual command centre allows the forward sections of the superstructure to be dedicated to the owner’s accommodation and observation lounge. Cameras and sensors provide the information required for navigation, while retractable glass wing stations offer a direct view outside during close-quarters manoeuvring. Expanses of glass, integrated terraces and the largely glazed superstructure bring the different levels together visually rather than expressing them as a conventional stack of decks.
Engineered to be possible
Technical feasibility is fundamental to every Feadship concept design. HIVE was developed with design, naval architecture and engineering working together from the outset, using technologies that already exist or are in active development. A DC electrical architecture combines three 900 kW variable-speed permanent-magnet generators running on HVO with fuel cells and a 5 MWh battery bank. For zero-emission operation, power can be supplied by seven 75 kW solid oxide fuel cells or nine 250 kW PEM fuel cells combined with a methanol reformer. Battery capacity is approximately five times that of Savannah’s pioneering 1 MWh installation within a comparable battery-room footprint.
Voith Schneider Propellers provide highly precise omnidirectional thrust without conventional rudders. Already proven on ferries and research vessels, the technology offers exceptional manoeuvrability, is well suited to dynamic positioning and operates with exceptionally low noise levels. “HIVE is designed around the idea that experiences can change people,” says Jan Schaffers. “We wanted to explore what becomes possible when you start not with what a yacht has always been, but with how people might want to live on board in the near future.” During the Monaco Yacht Show, the designers from Studio De Voogt will be available by appointment at the House of Feadship for interviews and further discussion about HIVE and its development.
