Matthew was invited by RWD, a UK superyacht design company, and by Feyi and Rory of SuperyachtNews to present at The Superyacht Design Forum 2018 at Chelsea Harbour in London. The audience mixed super, mega and gigayacht designers, manufacturers, operators and owners, in an industry where owners pay from $250 million for a 100 metre superyacht to over $500 million for a 200 metre gigayacht.
His half-hour session looked at the role materials, and creative AIs working behind the scenes, will play in future superyacht design, changing how yachts are built, maintained, operated and protected while improving the industry's green credentials. He began with energy: new materials, like those being developed by MIT and Lamborghini, that could let owners dispense with batteries altogether and turn the fabric of the yacht, from the lounge sofas to the hull, into energy generation and storage devices.
"I'm talking about the emergence of revolutionary new materials that will let yacht owners dispense of the batteries once and for all, and turn the very fabric of the superyachts, from the sofas in their spacious lounges to the hulls themselves, into energy generation and storage devices."Matthew Griffin, London, September 2018
Along the way he described omniphobic hull coatings that could cut the energy needed to move through the water by up to 80 percent, batteries that charge in seconds, zero energy air conditioning, and marine resistant solar materials, from energy generating windows to panels that work in cloud and generate electricity from rain. Later would come triboelectric materials and carbon nanotube energy systems embedded in structures, fabrics and glass.
On entertainment, he showed how thin, transparent and rollable displays could turn whole rooms into immersive environments, alongside personalised climates and personalised sound from Israeli company Noveto. On protection, he covered atomic knot materials, spray-on coatings that make superstructures almost indestructible, metamaterials for connectivity anywhere, 3D printed glass, biofabricated leather and wood stronger than steel.
He closed with breakthroughs in synthetic biology that might one day let owners grow, not build, their own superyachts.
