How can you balance aesthetics and function in marine engineering design for luxury vessels?

This can be said of any marine design effort. Or really any design effort at all. Knowing your client, and the things they view as salient features is key to a sucessfull design. One thing to note is that this goes beyond what the client is saying. Often clients don't know what it is that they actually want. They give a description of what they think they want, then are unhappy with the design that matches. Being able to interpret their request into what they actually want will save a lot of time, money, and frustration. This is also where advances in modeling and rendering are invaluable.

Again, this is something that needs to be considered in any marine design effort. A vessel not designed for its environment presents a substantial amount of risk. A key aspect to luxery design is going above the rquirements. For example, keeping noise down lower then needed as to not disturb passengers, adding advanced stabalization, larger HVACs, paying attention to where emissions go. Look at carnivals signiture smoke stack, designed to expell emissions over the side of the vessel rather then at the centerline. This is true balance between adhearing to the function of a smoke stack, accounting for the function of a luxery cruise ship, and capitalizing on its function for marketing and brand recognition.

I can say that every section above follows the design of any marine vessel, and this section isn't much different. However it is the stand out section. Details are what make luxery. Its what seperates a Toyota from a Lexus, and a Lexus from a Rolls Royce. A vessel such as an oil tanker has a bare minimum of company logos, art is crappy motivational posters and safety posters, temperature is hot or cold, and all the floors are blue speckle. Luxery vessels put money into the details. Both highly visable ones like beautiful walls, art, glass, and the days of the week on elevator floors; but also subtle ones worked into the very structural design of the vessel such as curves, opens spaces, balconies, and vibration / noise control.

Of course this is only my opinion, but I don't believe that the title of this article accurately reflects the subject matter of this article. This is for two reasons. The first is that they aren't explaining any balancing. For example they say consider the accent details, but what does that take away? What is the balancing factor. The second reason being that there really isn't a balancing between luxerourious design and function. When designing a yacht, cruise ship, etc luxery is part of the function. My comments above will show that this article doesn't differ from designing any other vessel. The real factor in this is money. The more luxery you add, the more money it takes. Discuss rather the balance of budget and luxery requirements.