Most superyachts are planned the same way: a stack of decks, a run of cabins, a saloon here and a sundeck there. With HIVE, Feadship started somewhere else. The Dutch yard unveiled the 115-metre concept at the Monaco Yacht Show in September, and the company says it is the largest concept design it has ever produced. The brief was not a list of rooms. It was a question about the people on board and how they want to spend their time.
Designed Around a Family
HIVE comes from Studio De Voogt, Feadship’s in-house design studio, with a team led by Senior Designer Jan Schaffers working alongside the yard’s naval architects and engineers. To keep the project grounded in real life, the team invented a family of four and designed for them, the same approach Feadship says it takes with every fully custom yacht: learn how the owners live first, then turn that into architecture.
Some of the thinking came from younger designers. Through Feadship’s partnership with Boat International’s Young Designer of the Year competition, finalists Aleksandra Orescanin, Dimitrios Timagenis, Fabio Peduzzi, Melisa Civlez, Lisandro Nicoletti and Oguzhan Akilli spent time in the Netherlands working with the Studio De Voogt team. Their conversations kept returning to one idea: a central place where everyone gathers before drifting off to their own pursuits. That became the hive, many activities arranged around a shared core. The salons of 1930s Paris, places for conversation, culture and performance, were the second reference.
A Four-Deck Heart
The core of the yacht is a single open volume that rises through four decks. On the main deck it can work as a saloon, a stage or an auditorium, with terraces opening on both sides. Curved staircases lead up to balconies and quieter corners, and a green room, service pantries and furniture storage are built in so the space can switch from family evenings to concerts, talks or a large party.
Around that center, the rest of the yacht offers very different moods. A two-storey beach lounge leads down to dining at water level for 24 or more guests. Forward, a round, glass-enclosed library opens onto a private garden. The owner’s deck has a 20-metre pool using Feadship’s patented ContraWave technology, which continues indoors as a suspended, glass-bottomed infinity pool. Below the waterline there is an underwater lounge, and above, an observation lounge with a glass roof that slides open for the night sky.
No Bridge up Front
From the outside, HIVE is long and low, building on Studio De Voogt’s earlier concepts Pure and C. The biggest change is the bridge. HIVE uses a virtual command center that relies on cameras and sensors for navigation, which frees the forward superstructure for the owner’s quarters and the observation lounge. For tight maneuvers, retractable glass wing stations give the crew a direct view outside. Large areas of glass and built-in terraces tie the levels together, so the yacht reads as one shape rather than a stack of decks.
Built to Be Buildable
Feadship stresses that its concepts are meant to be engineered, not just imagined, and that HIVE uses technology that already exists or is in active development. According to the yard, a DC electrical system pairs three 900 kW variable-speed generators running on HVO, a renewable diesel, with fuel cells and a 5 MWh battery bank, about five times the capacity of the 1 MWh installation on Feadship’s Savannah in a similar footprint. For zero-emission running, power can come from solid oxide fuel cells or from PEM fuel cells with a methanol reformer. Voith Schneider propellers, already used on ferries and research ships, provide precise thrust in any direction without conventional rudders, and run quietly.
The yard has a track record here. Since 2006, ideas first explored in Feadship concepts, including hybrid propulsion, new structural uses of glass and alternative fuels, have later appeared on yachts it delivered.
Schaffers puts the goal simply. “HIVE is designed around the idea that experiences can change people,” he said in Feadship’s announcement.
HIVE at a Glance
- Length: 115 metres; beam 17.5 metres; draught 4.05 metres
- Design: Studio De Voogt; steel hull, aluminium superstructure
- Power: three 900 kW generators on HVO, fuel cells and a 5 MWh battery bank
- Propulsion: Voith Schneider propellers
- Speed: 12 knots cruising, 16 knots maximum
- Range: about 9,500 nautical miles on HVO or 5,000 on methanol, at 12 knots
HIVE is a concept design, not a yacht under construction. Specifications are as published by Feadship.
