← All Work
Lily Ren
01 — Marine Concept — 2035
A Polestar product first. A yacht second.
YearSummer 2025
TypeBrand Concept
Scale150 ft
Duration14 weeks
A 14-week studio project at ArtCenter. A 150-foot fully electric yacht that takes Polestar's design language — restraint, honest materials, cool-toned calm — and translates it into the marine space. Built around the moment of arrival, not the moment of performance.
Polestar spent a decade proving that luxury can be calm. Ion tests whether the same three principles hold once you take them off the road and put them on the water.
Megayachts are built for guests. Cruisers are built for weekends that don't last. Both optimize for the audience, not the owner on board.
Architecture and cars redefined what luxury looks like over the last decade. Yachts swapped the drivetrain and left the 1990s hull, deck, and material language exactly as they were.
The electric boat market is forecast to grow from $5.0B in 2021 to $16.6B by 2031.
Designed around the thirty seconds of stepping from the dock onto a surface that holds still.
The project reset mid-term. An earlier direction prioritized entertainment, social volume, and feature density. The final version reframed the user — not someone escaping to party, but someone escaping to arrive. Every decision downstream flows from that one shift.
The hull reads as one carved object, not an assembly of panels. No bolted-on vents, no ornamental cuts. Everything that has to exist — vents, access, deck joints — is absorbed into the surface.
Continuous hull-to-deck blend. Linear light signature runs unbroken across the silhouette; solar glass canopy meets the hull as one surface.
Spatial program laid out bow-to-stern. The photovoltaic panel geometry defines the upper-deck plan; access hatches sit flush within the deck grain.
A single hearth centers the social core. Integrated lounge, bar, and storage read as extensions of the hull rather than furniture placed on it.
Most yachts default to glossy teak and chrome — Ion doesn't. Six core materials run across the whole boat: terrazzo, bead-blasted aluminum, grey-oak veneer, wool, nappa leather, and solar glass. An architectural vocabulary, not a marine one.
◉ Hover · material names
If the exterior is the statement, the interior has to be the relief.
Concrete to oak to brushed aluminum, with warm LED tucked under each tread — the descent reads as one choreographed moment rather than an assembly of parts.
A central corridor runs bow to stern, terminated by the fire. The twin lounges frame the sightline without interrupting it — every seat points at the same still center.
Built for a few close people, not a crowd. Sofa, table, storage, and hearth integrate into the hull — one continuous room that flexes from a quiet morning to a family evening.
What would normally be five pieces — two sofas, a low coffee table, a bar table, a hidden mini-fridge — resolved into a single structural volume built into the hull. Modular, transformable, and proportioned to the room rather than placed in it.
Solar glass collects light during the day. At night the boat lights itself with step LEDs, perimeter strips, and a single hearth — no aggressive yacht floods, no hard blue task light. The room reads as architecture, not an instrument panel.
☾ Hover · night mode
A single ambient system runs the boat. Instead of screens cut into surfaces, navigation, environment, and hull telemetry project onto the stone counter and the wall behind the bar — appearing when you look at them, fading when you don't. The interface exists only while it's being used.
☾ Hover · activate system
