The popular Meyer Werft has unveiled its 2024 vision for the future of cruise ship design. The shipbuilder has released a new concept every year since 2021, which introduces design and construction features that later influence cruise ship production.
The latest concept from the Papenburg, Germany-based shipbuilders, called ORIGIN, represents a change from conventional cruise ship designs, with a streamlined look and an innovative slide-out lounge.
Meyer Werft Introduces ORIGIN
Meyer Werft has a name to uphold when it comes to design and innovation as the world’s biggest cruise ship builder. Since 2021, the company has revealed new concepts every single year. The concepts show where the company believes cruise ship construction is heading in the future.
This year, the concept the team has come up with is called ORIGIN, a design that is miles from what we would call traditional cruise ship design and functionality today. It’s something that we could see long into the future and drastically different from today’s vessels, such as the new LNG-powered cruise ships.
The modern-looking ship introduces an asymmetrical design that is nothing like the typical “ship-like” exterior and interior. The form and layout are different, but that’s because they want to make it easier for people to move around and to be prepared for any future needs.
A major feature of the futuristic-looking ship is the Sky Lounge, an innovative space designed to extend outward, maximizing the interior while offering passengers a unique experience. The lounge can also be retracted back into the vessel’s hull, minimizing wind resistance.
“A highlight is the Sky Lounge: it extends to the outside and maximizes the interior of the lounge, while offering a unique “flying above the sea” experience. Wind resistance is minimized as soon as the lounge retreats to the ship, providing a unique experience at sea,” the shipyard states in a post on its Facebook page.
Meyer Werft’s approach with ORIGIN is a step away from the propulsion and power generation innovation that we’ve seen onboard concept ships in the last years and instead focuses on making cruise ships more efficient. If an impressive vessel like this were ever constructed, it would use the most up-to-date technologies at that time.
Meyer Werft states: “By the way, technical details such as the drive and the energy concept were deliberately left open. Depending on the year of construction, the current state of the technology would be installed.”
Yet, when it comes to ‘traditional’ shipbuilding, ORIGIN does lack ‘normal’ ship features such as a wrap-around deck or balconies. Not too worry, Meyer Werft’s concepts have always been far removed from the norm, while many aspects do find their way into new ships.
Meyer Werft’s Legacy of Forward-Thinking Design
Those who think that Meyer Werft’s concepts are just a fun step away from the daily grind couldn’t be more wrong. The shipyard’s creative designs offer a glimpse into the future of cruising, with many of the proposed innovations making their way into actual ship construction, especially at its own yards in Germany and Finland.
In 2021, Meyer Werft unveiled a 12,000-passenger trimaran cruise ship, that shares many different design features such as different neighbourhouds and an outdoor park with the current largest cruise ship in the world, Icon of the Seas, built by Meyer Turku.
In 2022, the company unveiled a private yacht concept, the TWO10, which featured sustainable propulsion solutions that have found their way to cruise ships, for example, with fuel cells and battery systems onboard Silversea’s Silver Nova.
Last year, Meyer Werft unveiled Reverse, a concept that highlighted sustainable and eco-friendly cruise ship design, and the possibilities that using wind and solar energy could bring to cruise ship construction.
As ORIGIN moves from concept to potential reality, we can be fairly certain that we will be seeing some of the designs onboard the cruise ships of the future.
