H2 Yacht Design

A recession start, and eleven years of refits before the first new-build

Horsfield trained in transport design at Coventry, graduating in 1988, then worked for Martin Francis in the south of France and for five years under Donald Starkey in London before he and Howard opened their own office. The name is the two founders' shared initial, the two Hs. The studio took whatever refit work it could find through the 1990s, which is not the origin story most yacht studios in this directory tell, and it gave Horsfield's team a decade of hands-on knowledge of how a boat actually ages before they ever drew one from scratch.

The first new-build came in 2005, when H2 won the interior of Talisman C, a 54 metre Proteksan Turquoise delivered in 2006 with naval architecture by Dubois; the yacht sails today as Talisman Maiton. Horsfield became sole owner in 2007. Howard is no longer part of the business (Boote magazin); H2's own site and Boat International both give 1994 as the founding year, not the 2004 date that circulates in some secondary listings, so this entry follows the primary sources.

Exterior and interior, but rarely both on the same hull

About 80 per cent of the studio's output is interior work, by Horsfield's own account, though his car-design background keeps him personally engaged with exteriors. Naval architecture is never in-house; H2 has described Laurent Giles Naval Architects as a preferred partner for hull and code work, and on individual projects the engineering is carried by whichever yard's own office is building the boat, De Voogt at Feadship or Naos or Marin Teknikk elsewhere. That is the same constraint most of the exterior-and-interior studios in this directory work under.

What is less common is how often H2 supplies only one discipline on a job it is publicly credited for. On the 123 metre Al Lusail, delivered by Lurssen in 2017, H2 drew the exterior and March & White did the interior. On the 85 metre Victorious, delivered by AKYACHT in 2021, the exterior is by Michael Leach Design and H2 did the interior. On the 80 metre Al Reem for Bilgin and the 194.9 metre REV Ocean for Vard, H2 again holds the interior only. A buyer hiring H2 for a full exterior-and-interior mandate, in the way Winch Design or Nuvolari Lenard would take one, should confirm that is actually what is being offered on a given hull rather than assume it from the portfolio.

H2 has drawn the exterior of a 123 metre Lurssen for the Emir of Qatar and the interior of the largest yacht in the world, and says plainly it has no house style connecting the two.

The exteriors: a 123 metre for an Emir, and a fleet of Turkish flagships

Al Lusail was delivered by Lurssen in 2017 at 123 metres for the Emir of Qatar, and Horsfield has named it his career highlight, saying the yard treated the exterior design as the priority on a generously budgeted project (Boote magazin interview). Kosatka, originally built as Graceful at the Sevmash yard in Russia and completed by Blohm and Voss in Hamburg, was delivered in 2014 at 82 metres with both exterior and interior by H2, naval architecture by AGAT Design Bureau. Maryah, a 125 metre former Soviet research vessel converted at the Elefsis shipyard in Greece and delivered around 2015, also carries an H2 exterior and interior over naval architecture by Naos.

The more consistent thread is Turkey. H2's relationship with Turquoise Yachts now runs to 13 projects and with Bilgin to 10, by the studio's own count reported at its 30th anniversary in 2024. Go, a 77 metre Turquoise flagship, was delivered in 2018 with exterior and interior both by H2, its hull painted in a colour the yard called Island Turquoise. Angelique followed from the same yard in May 2026 at 87.7 metres, again exterior and interior by H2, and was reported as the largest yacht by volume built in Turkey to date. Horsfield has said the studio's sweet spot is 70 to 80 metres, which is roughly where most of this run sits.

The interiors: the larger and less visible half of the business

REV Ocean, built by Vard and expected to deliver in 2026, carries an Espen Oeino exterior and an H2 interior across 18 guest cabins, an auditorium and conference space built to support both charter and marine research; the vessel spends the large majority of her operating time on science rather than private charter. It is the single largest interior H2 has been credited with, ahead of the 80 metre Al Reem for Bilgin, delivered around 2025 to 2026 with H2 on the interior and Unique Yacht Design on the exterior and naval architecture. Al Reem won the Motor Yacht Over 60 Metres award at the International Yacht and Aviation Awards in June 2026.

After You, the first hull in Damen Yachting's Xplorer 60 series, was delivered in 2025 at 60 metres with an Azure Yacht Design exterior and an H2 interior, and won Best Explorer Yacht at the Robb Report Best of the Best Awards 2026 for combining true expedition range with a warm, contemporary cabin rather than the bare, technical interiors expedition yachts often default to. Andromeda, the 107.4 metre Kleven explorer formerly named Ulysses and delivered in 2016, pairs an H2 interior with a rugged Oscar Mike exterior built for long ocean passages; H2 has said Andromeda's brief for adaptable, livable expedition space fed directly into the thinking behind REV Ocean.

No house style, by the studio's own account

"It is not about me and I don't try to put my identity on to the yacht, it is about the client," Horsfield told Boote magazin, a position the studio repeats on its own site: it says it prides itself on not having a house style that gets recycled from one commission to the next. Its own account of designing for charter makes the same point from a different angle, that the job is less about a visual statement and more about how a yacht is actually lived in, whether that is Angelique's owner-and-charter flexibility or After You's endurance-first layout (Journal by YATCO).

The trade-off is real and worth naming plainly. A studio built around not repeating itself does not give a buyer the instant, recognisable brand that a strong house style provides at a boat show or in a resale listing, the way Zuccon's hull language or Sinot's signature is often used to sell a boat before a prospective buyer has stepped aboard. What H2 sells instead is range: the same small team has drawn a rugged 107 metre explorer, an Ottoman-inflected Gulf flagship and the interior of a 195 metre polar research vessel within a few years of each other, which is a harder claim to verify from a single photograph.

Awards earned across three decades, not a recent run

Vicky, a 72 metre Proteksan Turquoise delivered in 2012, won a ShowBoats Design Award in 2013 for its interior layout, a result carried in Boat International's own studio profile of H2 and repeated on H2's own site. More than a decade later, Al Reem took the Motor Yacht Over 60 Metres award at the International Yacht and Aviation Awards in June 2026, and After You was named Best Explorer Yacht at the Robb Report Best of the Best Awards the same year. H2 was not, however, a winner at the World Superyacht Awards 2026 despite some secondary coverage implying a double win there; this entry follows Boat International's own published winners list for that event, which does not credit H2.

Read together, the spread matters more than any single trophy. A studio with one big win a decade ago and nothing since is trading on memory; H2's most recent recognition sits in the same year as its most recent deliveries, on two different yachts from two different yards, judged by two different panels. That is a better signal of current form than any one award on its own, though owners should treat a design award the way they treat a class certificate: evidence the boat cleared a bar, not proof of how it will feel to own.

What it costs, how the studio is built, and who it does not suit

No design fee is published by H2 or reported project-by-project in the trade press. The general market band, per SuperYachtReview's 2026 price guide updated in March, is 1 to 5 per cent of build cost for the designer and a further 2 to 4 per cent for project management, both outside the yard's own quoted price; an interior-only or exterior-only appointment of the kind H2 most often takes sits toward the lower end of that range because it is one discipline rather than a full mandate. Copyright normally stays with the studio, with the owner licensed to build one hull; a second hull to the same design is typically priced at around 1 to 1.5 per cent of that boat's value under published naval-architecture fee terms (Marsh Design and Sponberg Yacht Design), a convention this studio has no public reason to depart from.

H2 is a small studio, around twenty people across a London office in Putney and a second office opened in Nice in 2024, next to Winch Design's 150-plus or Nuvolari Lenard's roughly sixteen at the other end of this directory's range. Horsfield has owned it outright since 2007, which is a plainer succession position than a multi-partner practice but also a narrower one: there is no published plan for what happens to live projects if he stops working, a question this directory has raised about several single-founder studios. H2 suits an owner who wants a specific brief interpreted rather than a recognisable brand applied, and who is prepared to appoint a second studio for whichever half of exterior-and-interior H2 is not taking on a given hull. It does not suit a buyer who wants one office to run the entire design mandate, or who is chasing the instant resale recognition a strong house style can carry.

Pour qui: Owners who want a specific, non-repeating brief interpreted by a small team, on either the exterior or the interior of a hull, and who are willing to appoint a second studio for whichever half H2 is not taking.