Best Interior Design Motor Yachts 300GT to 499GT, Boat International Design & Innovation Awards 2019

The first of a new GranSport series for her builder, Overmarine, El Leon boldly combines the look of an open yacht with the liveability of a displacement motor yacht. The all-aluminium fast displacement style hull and four engines deliver the speed element of the Mangusta DNA, but how would this translate to a larger interior? It helped that the customer for hull No 1 has owned several Mangustas and had a good relationship with the yard when he and his designer sought to customise the layout and décor, adding a gym and a full of office and requesting American walnut and glossy ebony joinery. Features that distinguish this low, sleek boat such as floor-to-ceiling windows and a 2.6m saloon overhead height required clever solutions to hide the mechanisms of the luxury lifestyle such as air conditioning with fan coil units hidden in elegant freestanding furniture. Judges complimented the staircase surround that ties into the main deck lobby floor in a veneer waterfall effect and the innovative the use of a pliant new material borrowed from the automotive industry to light columns defining the entrance. It was developed for dashboards of luxury cars but Overmarine found a way to glue it into a semicircular plexiglass material. The result is simply stunning.

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