Espen Oeino International

De la Norvège à Monaco

Espen Oeino est né en Norvège et s'est formé à l'architecture navale avant de s'installer à Monaco, capitale du yachting. Il a ouvert son propre cabinet en 1994 et formalisé la société Espen Oeino International en 2006. Le studio est devenu une équipe pluridisciplinaire d'architectes navals, de designers et d'ingénieurs venus de nombreux pays. Ce mélange de profondeur technique et de talent de styliste sous un même toit est au coeur du fonctionnement de la maison.

Oeino a raconté qu'il dessinait des bateaux tout enfant, et la discipline de l'architecture navale traverse tout ce que produit le studio. Le bureau prend en charge la partie dure du design, la coque et la structure, en même temps que le style extérieur que l'on remarque en premier. Cette combinaison permet à Oeino de mener un projet de la première esquisse jusqu'à une forme qu'un chantier peut construire. Elle explique aussi pourquoi les propriétaires aux projets les plus grands et les plus techniques finissent par frapper à sa porte.

De l'ingénierie dans un costume affirmé

La signature Oeino est un profil fort et déterminé, qui se lit comme substantiel plutôt que délicat. Ses yachts portent leur volume avec assurance, et le style naît de l'architecture navale au lieu de lui être appliqué par-dessus. Le studio est à l'aise avec les coques rapides et effilées comme avec les formes robustes des explorer conçus pour atteindre des eaux lointaines. Cette amplitude fait qu'un dessin Oeino peut paraître sportif ou taillé pour l'expédition selon le brief.

Derrière l'allure, il y a la conviction qu'un yacht doit fonctionner à la mer avant de pouvoir être beau. La série Silver de yachts en aluminium longs et fins a montré jusqu'où le bureau pousse l'efficacité et la vitesse. Sur les plus grands projets, le studio met en balance un volume intérieur considérable et un profil qui reste résolu. Le propriétaire obtient un bateau conçu pour performer et dessiné pour retenir l'attention sur l'eau.

Une ingénierie sérieuse sous un costume musclé, à une échelle que peu de studios osent.

Une flotte de jalons

Le 126 mètres Octopus, livré par Lurssen en 2003, est le projet qui a fait le nom d'Oeino et reste l'un des yachts explorer les plus reconnaissables jamais construits. Skat, également de chez Lurssen, a donné une lecture plus brute et plus industrielle de la même idée d'expédition. Le studio a dessiné l'extérieur de Serene, le 134 mètres de Fincantieri qui comptait parmi les plus grands à flot à sa livraison. Chacun d'eux portait la marque musclée d'Oeino, à une échelle que peu de studios abordent.

Le portefeuille passe par Solandge, Ocean Victory, Kismet, Cloudbreak et l'imposant 156 mètres Dilbar de chez Lurssen. Galactica Super Nova a apporté un profil acéré et rapide à une très grande coque. Beaucoup de ces yachts associent un extérieur Oeino à une grande maison d'intérieur, une division du travail que le studio gère sans difficulté. Le fil constant est l'échelle, l'ambition et une forme qui tient dans le temps.

Travailler avec les grands chantiers

Oeino a construit une relation profonde avec les chantiers allemands, Lurssen au premier chef, qui dominent le haut du marché. Livrer des yachts de 150 mètres et au-delà exige un designer capable de parler la langue d'un constructeur naval sérieux. Le studio travaille étroitement avec le propriétaire et le chantier dès le concept le plus précoce, et tient la ligne sur les proportions à mesure que l'ingénierie se complique. Cette aisance avec la construction en grand chantier fait une large part de la valeur du studio.

Le bureau a l'habitude de propriétaires qui veulent quelque chose de singulier et sont prêts à le construire à partir d'une page blanche. Plutôt que d'adapter une plateforme, Oeino part du brief du propriétaire et laisse l'architecture navale suivre. Cette approche sur mesure convient aux clients qui commandent aux plus grandes tailles, là où rien de standard ne fait l'affaire. Elle fait aussi que chaque projet porte une identité claire plutôt qu'une formule maison plaquée sur une coque de série.

Un rang au sommet du marché

Peu de studios peuvent revendiquer autant de yachts véritablement grands qu'Espen Oeino International. Le bureau est largement considéré comme l'un des premiers noms des grands yachts à moteur sur mesure et des explorer. Son travail apparaît tout en haut des tableaux de taille, ce qui apporte à la fois du prestige et une observation intense. Pour un propriétaire de ce niveau, engager Oeino est une déclaration d'intention.

L'influence du studio dépasse sa propre flotte, puisque ses formes d'explorer ont contribué à populariser toute une catégorie de yachts de luxe robustes. Des designers plus jeunes ont suivi le modèle établi par le bureau avec Octopus et Skat. Ce rôle de faiseur de goût va de pair avec un flux régulier de nouvelles commandes. Oeino reste une valeur fixe au sommet du design de superyachts.

Lurssen, and the yards that can build this

The deepest relationship is with Lurssen, which built Skat, Octopus, Titania, Starfire, Dilbar, Amadea, Flying Fox and Luminance to Oeino drawings. Abeking and Rasmussen built the 72.5 metre Cloudbreak in 2016, Fincantieri built Serene, Oceanco built Infinity and the 111 metre DreAMBoat, and Feadship built Launchpad. Amels builds the Limited Editions range to his exteriors. Vard, a commercial shipbuilder, built REV Ocean.

That spread is worth something specific to an owner. A designer who has already been through a German yard's engineering review knows which drawings will come back marked up and which will not, and he knows how differently a Dutch yard and an Italian one price a compound curve. It also means the studio can be brought to a builder the owner has already chosen instead of steering him towards a favourite. At this end of the market only a handful of yards can take the work at all, and the designer is often the person who tells an owner which of them is honest about its order book.

The Amels route, for owners who will not wait five years

Oeino drew the exteriors for the Amels 60 and the Amels 80 in the Dutch yard's Limited Editions programme. The Amels 80 was developed over roughly two years with tank testing and computational fluid dynamics behind it and a hybrid propulsion package. The first Amels 60 was scheduled for delivery in May 2025. The hulls are built to a fixed platform, so the naval architecture, the engineering and much of the structure are settled before a buyer appears.

What the buyer still chooses is the layout below, the finishes, the tender package and a great deal of detail. What he gets in return is a delivery date measured in months instead of years and a price that is known at signature. The trade is that the exterior is the exterior, and it will be shared with other hulls in the series. For a first large yacht, or for an owner who has watched a friend endure a four year custom build, that is often the better deal.

Efficiency, and the work that is not a yacht

Silver Fast, delivered in 2015 by the Australian yard now trading as SilverYachts, is 77 metres of aluminium on a semi-displacement hull with a draft of 2.6 metres and a top speed above 27 knots. She was billed as the largest and fastest aluminium motor yacht with conventional propulsion. The Silver series as a whole was built around a long, slim, light hull that needs far less power for its length. Oeino drew all of them.

REV Ocean is the other outlier, a 194.9 metre research and expedition vessel built by Vard in Romania to an Oeino design, with an interior by H2 Yacht Design and a gross tonnage of 19,235. It is a working ship carrying laboratories and scientific equipment, and it was announced at a smaller 181.6 metres before growing. An owner ordering a long-range yacht benefits from that work directly, because the arithmetic on hull resistance and fuel burn is the same on a research ship as on a private one.

What the commission costs, and the point of no return

The design contract is a separate document from the build contract and it is signed first, so the studio is engaged and being paid months before a yard is. Work runs concept, then preliminary naval architecture and general arrangement, then contract design, which is the package yards quote against, then construction support. No studio in this directory publishes a fee scale. The one current market figure that puts a number on it is the SuperYachtReview 2026 price guide, updated March 2026, which lists the designer's fee at 1 to 5 per cent of build cost and project management at a further 2 to 4 per cent, both outside the price a yard quotes. On a build costed at EUR 100 million that band is EUR 1 million to EUR 5 million. Naval architecture and exterior without an interior sits in the lower half of it.

The gates matter more than the total. Concept and preliminary are bought in stages and can be stopped between them. A letter of intent reserves a build slot, and the yacht building agreement is the document that commits an owner to the yard and the price, as Oceanco sets out in its owner's guide published by BOAT International on 10 June 2024. The real lock-in is later and quieter. Once the yard has begun engineering to these drawings, changing studio means paying twice for the same hull form. This office does not suit an owner who wants one firm to hand over a finished boat including the interior, it is not the place for a sailing yacht, and it is not the place for a first boat under about 40 metres.

Who owns the drawings, and what happens without Oeino

The default across the profession is that the studio keeps the copyright and the owner buys a licence to build one hull. The ITIC standard trading conditions for naval architects, in the version dated 8 July 2025, put it plainly: all intellectual property created under the agreement is owned by the consultant, with the client receiving a non-exclusive royalty-free licence for the purposes of that agreement. Eric Sponberg, writing on the same point, notes that the owner of a custom yacht buys the right to build one boat and that a second hull attracts a royalty of about 1.5 per cent of its price. Superyacht practice is usually better than that, with the designer keeping title and granting an exclusive, irrevocable and assignable licence, which is what Federico Santini describes as the standard clause in Barche magazine, August 2018. An owner planning a second hull or a heavy refit should have that word exclusive in the contract, and the drawings released in native format.

The practice carries the founder's name and has done since 1994. Nothing in the ITIC conditions, and nothing in any marine standard form, says what happens if the named designer becomes unavailable in year three of a four-year build. Commercial practice elsewhere treats death or incapacity of a key person as a termination trigger and obliges the consultant to offer a replacement of equal standing for the client's approval. That clause has to be asked for. So does an escrow or step-in right over the drawing set, because a licence is worth nothing if the office that holds the files has closed. A studio of around 30 people with a formed company behind it is a better bet here than a two-person practice, and that is a real reason to prefer it.

What a name on the profile is worth at resale

Resale is the question owners are too polite to ask and it has a plain answer here. An Oeino profile helps, marginally, for a reason that has nothing to do with taste. More than 50 delivered hulls means a broker has comparables, and a comparable is what a valuation is built from. Ocean Independence, writing on 11 May 2026, puts builder pedigree at the top of the list of things that hold value and names the Northern European yards this studio works with. The exterior is also the part of a yacht that cannot be refitted away. An interior can be gutted in a season. A hull form and a superstructure profile are what the second owner inherits, which is why a heavy, purposeful shape that was never fashionable does not become unfashionable.

The offsetting truth is scale. Above 100 metres the buyer pool is a few dozen people worldwide and it thins further for ice class and long range, because those are expensive capabilities to maintain and only a certain kind of programme uses them. Denison Yachting counted 470 yachts of 24 metres and over sold in 2025, at an average 487 days on market and a median of 277, and the large end sits well above those averages. The Amels Limited Editions exteriors are the exception in this portfolio. A series boat has dense comparables and a known specification, and that is the single strongest resale position available in yachting short of a Feadship.

Pour qui: Les propriétaires qui commandent aux plus grandes tailles et veulent une vraie architecture navale avec un profil qui a de la présence.