A legendary name in yacht design lives on
Bannenberg DNA
Story Cecile Gauert Photos courtesy of Dickie Bannenberg
Few designers to date can equal the kind of range and lasting impact Australian-born Jon Bannenberg has had on the look and feel of today’s superyachts. Browsing through the list of the world’s 100 largest yachts, it is obvious his legacy remains alive and well. Rising Sun, Limitless, Carinthia VI and Coral Island, are among those that acquired their memorable looks in the Chelsea studio that was home to his design firm for a quarter of a century. He influenced an entire new generation of yacht designers and, today, his 46-year-old son Dickie Bannenberg, continues the family legacy from a new studio in London’s Fulham neighborhood.
The short version of the story of how an Australian-born concert pianist with an affinity for Polynesian culture came to be known as one of the foremost yacht designers boils down to an anecdote. Bannenberg, who moved to London at in his early 20s to pursue a career in music and worked in a London antiques district soon discovered that he could make a living as an interior decorator, redoing boutique interiors and private apartments. One day a client showed him the drawings for a yacht he was planning to build. The story has been told many times, and the exact dialogue is not known, but what Bannenberg said essentially was that the design was lackluster, or maybe something a little stronger. According to his friends, Bannenberg was a gentleman but also was opinionated. “Well, if you’re so smart Bannenberg, do better,” the client is said to have replied. Jon apparently did, and there was no turning back.
What Jon Bannenberg lacked in formal training (he was not a naval architect and did not study drawing or architecture, although he could draw brilliantly), he more than made up for with pure talent, charisma, determination and a unique vision, say those who knew him best. Yacht owner Ray Catena, who owned a series of Oceanfast yachts designed by Jon Bannenberg, calls him “The Frank Lloyd Wright of yacht design.” Like Wright, Bannenberg had a unique way of looking at design and commonly broke conventions. “He was way ahead of his time. He just came up with ideas that no one could think of,” says Catena. “To this day his yachts look current.”
Although Jon Bannenberg made a name for himself and his yacht design firm long before his association with the Australian yard Oceanfast (in the mid-80s to 1990s), Dickie says that it brought to light many of the creative ideas that have had a lasting influence on the way yachts look today. “That was a time when a lot of the signature things that he was known for appeared: Huge round windows, glued-in windows and forms in carbon fiber. Oceanfast, in the nicest sense, was like a blank piece of paper. They were keen to break all those molds,” Dickie Bannenberg says. Jon went on to design at least 12 yachts for the Australian yard, including several yachts for Catena.
It is during the Oceanfast days that Australian-born designer Sam Sorgiovanni got to know Jon Bannenberg. Beyond tangible design innovations such as the extra large round and oval ports and the “wings” that bear his signature, Sorgiovanni subscribes to the opinion that Bannenberg defined the role of the yacht designer. “Although today we take the term and profession, Yacht Designer, as a person that is specialized in the form and functionality of a yacht, until Jon Bannenberg it simply didn’t exist. Jon is the ‘Father of Yacht Design’ ..simple! Jon created and gave importance to the need of having a single person responsible for all aspects of a yacht: aesthetics and functionality,” Sorgiovanni says.
Bannenberg, of course, made his mark long before his Oceanfast period, starting to make waves in the late 1960s. “My dad must have been a terrifying breath of fresh air,” Dickie Bannenberg says. “Until then interior design almost did not exist. It was sort of slightly vulgar for someone to design the interior of yachts.” Dickie, who worked alongside his father for 16 years, adds: “He had a horror of yacht interiors that had that doll size thing going. Everything used to be scaled down to about two-thirds of their actual size for some reason, when there was no need to be.”
Jon designed a yacht built by Camper & Nicholsons in 1967, and two years later designed the first of a triumvirate of yachts name Carinthia, which for many today remain icons of Bannenberg’s legacy, especially Carinthia VI, which was launched in the early 1970s. The yacht now called, The One, firmly established his reputation and inspired other designers for years to come.
“In my opinion there is one yacht which stands head and shoulders above all the rest and that is Carinthia VI,” says designer Martin Francis. “This yacht of 72m (236’) has less accommodation than many current 55m (180’) and is incomparably more elegant and of course faster. At a personal level it was the yacht which most inspired me in the design of Eco, which was in fact the replacement for the other two most remarkable and innovative yachts Jon did, Azteca and Paraiso,” he adds.
Carinthia VI inspired but also raised a few eyebrows. The yacht’s angular superstructure and strict symmetry were unique at the time. “It scared the pants off everyone, it looked like Star Wars,” Dickie Bannenberg says. But Jon Bannenberg dared to go against conventions and rules. “Jon was really the first to push the envelope in styling of the larger yachts, much to the dismay of many a boatbuilder,” says Lürssen’s Michael Bremen. “But his drive and perseverance ultimately won the day and his legacy speaks for itself. Following in his footsteps, the designers who once worked for him (and there are many) all continued in this vein and we are now faced with continually new challenges. Jon was the catalyst to make this happen.”
One of today’s yacht designers who is a Bannenberg alumnus is Tim Heywood. He worked with Bannenberg from 1971 to 1996, a period that saw the launch of such memorable vessels as Siran, Cedar Sea II, Coral Island, Nabila (now known as Kingdom 5KR) and Limitless. What he says Bannenberg brought to design were strength of line, modern-style interiors and use of modern materials. As such he says the 1994 Coral Island is “a truly original Bannenberg yacht, which was created with only two directives from the client: ‘No lacquer’ and ‘no gold’.” Another contribution he made, beside his sense of style and taste, was linking the interior to the exterior design, Heywood adds. In fact, according to Dickie, it was common for the Bannenberg firm to design everything from the yacht’s line, interior and furnishings to the yacht logo and uniforms.
Today the Bannenberg name carries on through the design firm Dickie now heads with Creative Director Simon Rowell. A couple of years ago, Dickie found a great industrial building not too far from the Chelsea Football team that belongs to a well-known yacht enthusiast who owns a couple of the vessels in the top 100. The building was spacious and had a lot of “good DNA,” big windows and high ceilings. It appeared to be the perfect space to start anew after Jon passed away in 2002. A few years ago Dickie left the Chelsea Studio where he worked alongside his father for many years. Dickie says there was quite a bit of restarting to be done, with a lot of people waiting to see what would happen. What has happened is that he and his team of 10 have worked steadily, building a portfolio of projects, mostly interiors at this point, for well-known yards. Among the projects now coming to fruition is the soon-to-launched Feadship Predator. Bannenberg’s team created the interior of this unusual-looking vessel, sporting a trendy reverse bow design. It has very few accommodations for a yacht this size. The firm has also worked on the interior refit of the classic yacht Bluebird and 170’ Illusion and is working on the interior design of a steel displacement vessel being built at Trinity Yachts.
“We’ve got a full house of projects with pretty much all the major yards, Abeking, Lürssen, Feadship, Heesen and all of the rest. I hope it is an indication of how we are performing.” Everything is done in-house, and Dickie describes the Bannenberg taste as a “take- no-prisoners contemporary, sophisticated, metropolitan” type of design, although they have done more classic interiors too. Dickie has a geography degree from Cambridge but acquired design experience alongside his father and, as he puts it, “there is a good dose of Bannenberg DNA” in him.
