Tim Heywood Design

• Founder: Tim Heywood, with his wife Vanessa, in 1996
• Background: trained at Central School of Art and Design, then around twenty years working for Jon Bannenberg
• Based: rural England, after Heywood moved the studio out of London
• Team: effectively a two-person practice, with Heywood doing the drawing
• Discipline: exterior design only, with interiors always drawn by another studio
• Signature: a sweeping sheerline falling to the stern, compound curves, vertical bows on the Amels range
• Largest project: A+ (ex Topaz), 147m, Lurssen, 2012
• Other landmarks: Al Mirqab (133m, 2008), Symphony (101.5m, Feadship, 2015), Carinthia VII (97.2m, Lurssen, 2002), Pelorus (114.5m, Lurssen, 2003), Ice (90m, Lurssen, 2005)
• Series work: exteriors for the full Amels Limited Editions range, six sizes from 180 to 272 feet
• Awards: Al Mirqab took Motor Yacht of the Year at the World Superyacht Awards in 2009
• Also: named chairman of the BOAT International Design and Innovation Awards
• Interiors: usually by another studio, including Andrew Winch Designs and Terence Disdale Design

Twenty years with Bannenberg

Heywood studied at the Central School of Art and Design and then joined Jon Bannenberg, the man credited with inventing modern yacht design. He stayed for around two decades. Andrew Winch and Terence Disdale came through the same office in the same era, which is why three of the most influential exterior studios in yachting share a common grammar.

He set up Tim Heywood Design in 1996 with his wife Vanessa. By then he had already worked on major projects inside someone else's practice and had a reputation among the German yards. The studio took commissions at 90 metres and above almost immediately. That is unusual for a new office and reflects how much of the earlier work was already his.

A studio of two

Heywood does the sketches, the drawings and the follow-through himself. He has said he chose not to build a large office and works with Vanessa alongside him. The studio sits in rural England, and he has said that clients visit more often since he left London.

For an owner this cuts two ways. The person who sells the design is the person who draws it and the person who argues with the yard about it, which is not true at every studio of this reputation. Against that, capacity is limited and a project has to wait its turn. There is also no succession behind the name, which is a fair question to ask before signing a four year build.

One long curve held the length of a 147 metre hull, which is the hardest thing to draw and the most expensive thing to build.

The sheerline

The Heywood signature is a single long curve. His yachts carry a sheerline that gently sweeps down towards the stern, with topsides and superstructure that follow the same movement instead of sitting as separate boxes. The curves are compound, which means the yard has to form them in three dimensions and cannot simply roll a plate. That costs money and is one reason his boats read as expensive from a mile away.

Carinthia VII, 97.2 metres from Lurssen in 2002, is the clearest teaching example. Her hull was painted a bespoke blue mixed for the project and her bulwarks were made from glass in place of conventional stanchions and rails, so nothing interrupts the line. Symphony, delivered by Feadship in 2015 at 101.5 metres, uses a concave clipper bow and a naval blue hull to reach a classical profile, with a sculptural mast Heywood has described as drawn from a dolphin's tail. Both boats look calm from a distance and complicated up close.

The Lurssen years

Much of Heywood's reputation was built at Lurssen. Pelorus, 114.5 metres, was delivered in 2003 and set a template for the very large yacht with a low, stretched superstructure. Ice followed in 2005 at around 90 metres and was among the first superyachts to use Azipod propulsion, which put the drives in steerable pods under the hull and freed up the engine room layout. She won at the World Superyacht Awards.

A+, delivered in 2012 at 147 metres and known at launch as Topaz, was the fourth largest yacht in the world when she was handed over. Terence Disdale did the interior. A yacht at that length can easily look like a ferry, and the achievement of the exterior is that it does not. Heywood held a single line the length of a football pitch and a half.

Al Mirqab and the set pieces

Al Mirqab, 133 metres, was built in Germany at Wewelsfleth and delivered in 2008 with a Heywood exterior over an interior by Andrew Winch Designs. She took Motor Yacht of the Year at the World Superyacht Awards in 2009 and her interior took the design prize in the same year. She was the first project on which Heywood and Winch worked together.

Symphony was the longest yacht Feadship had built when she launched in 2015. Aquila, 85.6 metres, came out of Derecktor in the United States in 2010 and was among the largest yachts built in America in modern times. Kogo, 71.7 metres, was delivered by Alstom Marine in 2006. Planet Nine, 73.2 metres from Admiral in 2018, took the same design language into an ice-classed explorer with an owner's suite of around 250 square metres.

Amels and the semi-custom route

Heywood drew the exteriors for the entire Amels Limited Editions range, which now runs across six sizes from 180 to 272 feet. That series lets an owner buy a hull already in build at the Dutch yard and take delivery far sooner than a full custom project allows. The naval architecture and the platform are fixed. The layout, the finishes and a good deal of the detail are not.

Plvs Vltra, 74 metres, was the first Amels Limited Editions 242 and was delivered in 2016 in jet black paint with white decks. Here Comes The Sun, 83 metres, arrived the same year as the flagship of the range and was later extended by six metres in refit. The recognisable Amels look, a vertical bow with round ports along the hull, is Heywood's. For an owner who wants his lines without a blank sheet build, this is the way in.

Where his responsibility stops

Heywood is an exterior designer. He takes the profile, the deck layout as it affects the outside, the superstructure and the way volume is arranged above the waterline. Naval architecture belongs to the yard or to a separate office. Interiors are normally somebody else's work.

On a few boats he has done more, including interior work on Carinthia VII. The usual pattern is a three-way team of Heywood, an interior house and the yard's engineers. An owner should expect to appoint the interior designer separately and to referee the two studios where the outside and the inside meet at a window line or a deck edge. That boundary is where most build disputes start.

How an owner engages him, and what it costs

The process begins with conversation. Heywood has said his job is to open a client's mind to ideas without pushing him past what he actually wants, and that even a series design gets altered for each buyer. He produces the concept sketches and general arrangement, the owner and yard price it, and the drawings then develop into something a builder can engineer.

Exterior studios at this level charge either against defined stages or as a percentage of build cost, and on a large custom yacht the exterior design fee runs into seven figures before the interior is even appointed. A yacht of this size is commonly three to four years from concept to delivery, with the design phase alone taking many months. The premium is real and it is concentrated in the compound curves the yard has to build. Owners who want a cheap fair hull should be told this at the first meeting.

Recognition, and who it does not suit

The studio has collected World Superyacht Awards, BOAT International Design and Innovation Awards and Monaco Yacht Show honours across three decades, and Heywood has been named chairman of the BOAT International Design and Innovation Awards. Awards at this level are worth something narrow. They tell an owner the boat was finished to a standard a panel of specialists would defend, and they do help resale.

This studio does not suit an owner who wants an interior and an exterior from one office, or one who needs a very large team responding to design changes at speed during a build. It does not suit a first boat under 50 metres. In 2026 the studio worked with Falcon Tenders on an eleven metre superyacht tender, which is about as small as the name goes.

Who it is for: Owners commissioning a large custom motor yacht who want a profile that ages slowly and will pay the yard to build compound curves.