Page 31: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (March 2004)

Cruise Shipping • Interior Design

With a Diesel it's more comfortable

MAN B&W Diesel - a member of the MAN Group

MAN B&W Diesel AG • Stadtbachstr. 1 • 86224 Augsburg • Germany • Tel. +49 821 322-0 • Fax +49 821 322-3382 • [email protected] • www.manbw.com

How do you balance your design with naval architecture and shipbuilding capabilities?

Advances in shipbuilding technology have mainly had a balancing effect on the rising cost of ship construction, which is due in this case to the market sophistication demands, safety issues and the cost which they create. At the end of the day, if the ship costs too much, then the passage price will raise to a point where the market will turn thin. Unfortunately, the design effect of this curtails creativity and design revolu- tion. In every project that I have been involved with, the initial most daring naval architecture creativity is always compromised in the final form of the ship. But this is a fact of life which slows revolution into evolution.

What will the Cruise Ship of the

Future Be?

Questions about the future are best answered by the past, as it is the only guide post to which one may rely upon to give any insight into predicting what may come. 'Should,' is the key word to this future. The cost of ships today does not allow for mistakes in basic planning, therefore the ships which will come to be will be evolutionary rather than revo- lutionary. I'm sure that owners would be happier believing that they are being shown a new design which should be built, rather than one which could be built.

What is the market that will steer the future?

Again, the past is the breeding ground in my opinion. If the past tells us any- thing, it tells us that the market wants more. If we look at the matriarchal ships which created cruising as we know it

Passenger ships, ferries and cruise liners connect ports, coasts and continents by timetables which are accurate right down to the minute. MAN B&W four-stroke Diesel engines have been proving their reliability either as straightforward Diesel propulsion or Diesel-electric propulsion plant on board famous cruise liners and ferries.

MAN B&W's modern IS (Invisible Smoke) engines use fuel-water emulsifaction in order to operate with invisible smoke and clean exhaust at any load - with NOx emissions far below the IMO limit.

Circle 246 on Reader Service Card today, it is clear that what they have offered the market then, is the whale oil lamp version of the halogen light today.

Yet some of these veterans are still showing guests a good time, which demonstrates to me that the initial con- cepts which began the phenomenal growth of cruising are still pertinent today. What has happened is that those concepts have become sophisticated, from safety items, to decoration materi- als, to new concepts of ship designs, to ways to cook a thousand chickens better: it is dramatic. In my mind, the personal face of the market has always been a diverse group of people. This has played itself out in my work whereby I have very consciously and deliberately set out to create diverse and varied environ- ments with and within all of the ships I have designed.

March 2004 31