We’ve seen plenty of outlandish boat concepts over the years, from the Streets of Monaco ‘floating island’ to the whale-shaped Schopfer Oculus and even the shark-like Seabreacher. However, these ‘avant garde’ concepts rarely generate a platform you would actually want to own, so the Vripack Casa, from the renowned Dutch design house responsible for the Vripack Esquire 35, as well as the solar-powered Vripack V20, comes as a pleasant surprise...

 

Vripack Casa - design based on a Brazilian house

The Vripack Casa is based on a Brazilian house for a three-generation family.



 

Robin de Vries, designer at Vripack, explains the thinking behind the development of a vessel that was apparently conceived on the basis of a traditional Brazilian house: “The owner is in a time of his life where his children are old enough and his parents are young enough to join him on long voyages. They are active adventurers who will be cruising to harsh environments, so they require the ability to be comfortably inside together while still enjoying the outside ambience.”

 

To that end, the Casa combines privacy with openness by means of a long interior layout, plus a one-and-a-half-storey ‘welcome lounge’ with spiralling lateral stairs and uninhibited access to the VIP areas. The layout is also designed to cater for the differing needs of the owner’s multi-generational family - not least by shifting the traditional Sky Lounge aft to create a full glass observatory. This leads forward to an enclosed garden area, surrounded by glass bulwarks but with open sides, generating a space that feels external but keeps the family safe.

Vripack Casa – interior

The design makes safe internal spaces feel open and external.



 

With a round bilge, semi-displacement steel hull and lightweight aluminum topsides, this A-rated offshore craft is designed to ply a ten-knot furrow all over the world, from the Amazon to the Arctic. And aesthetically, the owner’s request for the traditional lines of a proper yacht rather than the mouthy bravado of a modernist exhibition piece have also been achieved. As Marnix J. Hoekstra of Vripack explains: “It isn’t a building; it’s a ship”... and yet “with the lack of a traditional aft deck and the addition of a Brazilian-House-inspired open mid-deck, we have crafted a contemporary globe trotter that sets a new standard”.

 

To find out more about this and the rest of Vripack’s global explorers, visit www.vripack.com.

Written by: Alex Smith
Alex Smith is a journalist, copywriter and magazine editor with a long history in boating and a happy addiction to the water. He’s worked on boats, lived on boats, bought boats, sold boats and – when he’s not actually on board a boat – he can generally be found in his Folkestone office, tapping away at the computer and gazing out to sea.