Ondrej Holzman A year after the death of Steve Jobs to the surface of the water got it the yacht on which the Apple co-founder worked with the famous French designer Philippe Starck for five years. Venus, as the vessel is named, is a clear example of the minimalism that Jobs espoused and speaks volumes about the visionary's design practices.
The construction of the yacht took sixty months due to the fact that Jobs and Starck wanted their work to be perfect, so they fine-tuned every millimeter of it. In a recent interview, Philipp Starck shared what it was like to work with Jobs on the project and what it says about the late Apple founder.
Starck says Venus was about the elegance of minimalism. When Steve first came to him about wanting to design a yacht, he gave Starck free rein and let him take on the project in his own way. “Steve just gave me the length and the number of guests he wanted to host and that was it,” recalls Starck, how it all began. "We were short on time in our first meeting, so I told him I would design it as if it were for me, which was fine with Jobs."
This method actually worked in the end, because when Starck completed the exterior design, the co-founder of the apple company did not have too many reservations about it. Much more time was spent on the small details that Jobs clung to. "For five years, we met once every six weeks to deal only with various gadgets. Millimeter by millimeter. Detail by detail,” describes Starck. Jobs approached the design of the yacht in the same way as he approached Apple products - that is, he broke down the object into its basic elements and discarded what was unnecessary (such as the optical drive in computers).
"Venus is minimalism itself. You won't find a single useless thing here... A single useless pillow, a single useless object. In this respect, it is the opposite of other ships, which instead try to show as much as possible. Venus is revolutionary, it's the complete opposite." explains Starck, who obviously got along with Jobs, probably similar to Steve Jobs and Jony Ive at Apple.
“There is no reason for aesthetics, ego or trends in design. We designed by philosophy. We kept wanting less and less, which was wonderful. Once we were done with the design, we started refining it. We kept grinding it out. We kept coming back to the same details until they were perfect. We made many phone calls about the parameters. The result is a perfect application of our common philosophy," added a visibly excited Starck.
Will there be a photo? :)
I want to see the inside
it could have been designed by jobs or god himself… for some it is both the same…. anyway, compared to normal yachts, this yacht is… pretty ugly
"There is no reason for aesthetics, ego or trends in design." Agreed, personally I don't like the exterior at all and you can see that he had no feeling for aesthetics.
"We kept wanting less and less, which was wonderful." Those were wonderful keynotes. Our products can do less and less. We've stripped out so many features and it's beautiful :)
Apparently you don't know much about design and simplicity is preferred there.
I like it and it's different. Cool.
Great article. Perhaps the only Czech server that gives us such information. Keep it up! ;)