Ulyssia is a 320-metre gigayacht with a beam of 34 and a draught of 7.5. and which displaces 98,000 gross tonnes. It is the brainchild of the Swiss promoter Frank Binder, while Espen Øino handled the exterior lines, and Francesca Muzio was the lead designer for the interiors
by Sacha Giannini
Collectively, we have a subconscious idea of what a home should be, which means caves, skyscrapers and megayachts all have something apparently similar to that archetype. That is because a home is the image of yourself, of your personality, and helps you find yourself. Living there means developing habits as part of our reciprocity with spaces and things within a functional and symbolic system. Nevertheless, inhabiting somewhere is also loaded with other traditions that, in the case of the interiors developed by FM Architettura for Ulyssia, the new ship and ground-breaking residential model for the third millennium, take on great significance because they reflect a contemporary principle of nomadism. This is for people who can experience the world while feeling entirely at home, even when at sea and in Africa, New York or Polynesia, admiring sunsets and experiencing local culture.
«The main objective of the design is to make guests feel at home. The services and communal areas will complement and integrate with their daily routines. This is fundamental and represents a challenge for a boat of this size. Another key aspect is the connection with nature». Francesca Muzio
Francesca Muzio has understood for some time that travelling is the best way to appreciate the makeup of a land through experiences and fragments felt along the way, in a kind of modern-day nomadism that recovers the perceptive sense of the ancient sea routes. Francesca thinks that observing things and preferring seeing to thinking has to be the way to start, as seeing means immersing yourself in the world, whereas thinking often means stepping back from it. The Ulyssia is a unique gigayacht, an outsize masterpiece of hospitality. Espen Øino and Francesca Muzio, selected from an international competition as lead designers for the interiors, will transform this imposing residential utopia into a fascinating piece of steel and aluminium, to be assembled by 2029 at Papenburg by the German naval-mechanical group Meyer Werft GmbH, which specialises in producing large ships.
Founded in 2010 by Francesca Muzio, FM Architettura is a leading interior design studio based in Ancona, Italy. The studio specialises in bespoke interior design and collaborates with over 200 artisans to bring Italian craftsmanship to superyachts, private residences, luxury hotels and residential towers. Born and raised in Italy, Francesca will oversee the common areas and also be available to design individual homes.
Ulyssia, a place without a place that lives for itself, closed in on itself and open to the future, is a representative figure of living. This urban vessel exalts collective life and reserves the exclusivity of individual life, where everyone retains their freedom and habits.
The Ulyssia will not be a simple cruise ship, but rather an exclusive liner on which a small community of the privileged will embark upon a new daily life on the sea, not in cabins with bunks and leftover spaces, but in over 130 luxurious apartments that are fully fitted, from garages to private elevators, with 22 suites available for use by guests. It is the concept of a community, a shared property through fifty-year rental contracts of areas ranging from 100 to nearly 1,000 square metres, with over 300 crew who are highly trained to cater for every need on board. It is set to welcome wealthy businesspeople or habitual travellers. It will follow routes on an itinerary established by the “tenants” themselves, united by a shared passion for travel and adventure. There will also be projects to support an NGO and various philanthropic initiatives, including medical projects for health emergencies, thanks to the cutting-edge on-board medical centre, which can perform X-rays, MRIs, TACs, endoscopies, and even dental care.
As well as Francesca Muzio, other established designers were brought in, under her purview, to give the residences their own character – right down to the smallest detail. Rémi Tessier, with his simplicity in detail; the Belgian designer Jean – Michel Gathy, with his extensive portfolios of hotels and iconic resorts; and then there is Sabrina Monteleone from Monaco with her intricate internal and external decorations. Amongst them will also be Jenan Interiors and Kravitz Design, the studio run by the legendary American rock star Lenny Kravitz.
So, will it be a luxury gigayacht resort or a private social club? Probably both. But it will be organised following a condominium scheme, which will continually plot a route between percentage shares and private spaces, exclusive views and services to support daily life. Facilities will include a 1,900m2 spa run by the Chenot group, along with restaurants, a sports centre with fitness and jogging, swimming pools, a theatre, a library, a gourmet market, educational facilities with on-board tutoring and even a submarine for exploration. Having a residence on a large boat is the new luxury experience that, according to Francesca Muzio, will increasingly follow a type of luxury yachting and its residential variants, which will be able to change setting, view and horizons on a nearly daily basis. Designed to avoid any restrictions in terms of access, Ulyssia will be of a size to go through the Panama Canal, go under the bridges in Patras and Sydney, and also to engage in some epic river journeys. Inertia and energy recovery systems, combined with a hybrid propulsion system offering bio-fuel or methanol options, will provide a good range and promise interesting sustainability figures.
Beyond being a craft designed to serve yachting and its clients, for Francesca Muzio Ulyssia is evocative to walk through, with thematic, multi-coloured social areas, in shades of ivory, dove grey and tobacco. The interiors are enlivened by reflections, transparent sections and gloss paint, but wool, leather, fabrics and recycled materials also absorb the light. Marble and textures cover the floors and bulwark walls, gilded by oblique lights and the glow from the artfully fitted recessed lighting below the furniture and decorative mountings. “We have designed the boat with four communal lobbies as welcoming air, fire, earth and water gardens, creating models to experience the common spaces with art exhibitions, gourmet markets, spas, restaurants, ice waterfalls and double levels in which nature plays an important role and is also brought indoors”, declared Francesca Muzio.
«…here the owner will marry ‘lifestyle’ even before style, using this ship as a semi-ready product to be used in different ways: for entertainment, for business, for residence and for cultural activities…».
Francesca Muzio
Ulyssia is the heterotopy par excellence envisaged by Foucault, the idea of a localised “counterspace” in which normality is overturned, disputed nearly to fulfil a dream that is defined by this incredible floating space that is suspended between adventure, travelling and imagination. Although it is connected remotely to the whole of the rest of the world through WiFi, chat groups and smart working, Ulyssia also suspends it, neutralises it and somehow inverts it, becoming a place of compensation, a real space that is so perfect and ordered that it makes the rest look inadequate and obsolete. The idea is a winning one; it will be a mutually supportive space between these “stateless people” on board who are looking for “…the meaning of travel, even before ownership”, as Francesca Muzio says.
On-board services
- Marina, yacht club and diving centre
- Chenot spa, medical centre, swimming pools
- Sports fields, gym, simulators • Restaurants, bars, culinary studio • Theatre, library, golf simulator, art studio • Four luxury tenders
- A fully equipped yacht club, Ulyssia Marina and diving centre • Chenot spa, fitness and wellness centre, hairdresser and beautician and a fully staffed medical centre • Indoor and outdoor swimming pools with numerous terraces and solariums • Numerous sports and recreational facilities, including a 600-metre jogging/walking track and a room for dance/fitness classes • Padel tennis, pickleball, and multi-purpose courts
• Numerous restaurants, a culinary studio and a fine wine cellar • A gourmet market, several bars, including a cigar bar, a lounge and a disco • 24-hour in-residence catering, including a ‘Call a Chef’ programme
• A theatre conference room and an extensive library • Golf club and simulator - An art studio • Children’s programme with entertainment and educational facilities
- Flight simulators for motor sports, fixed wing and helicopter • State-of-the-art connectivity and corporate conference facilities
• Two helicopters • Two Triton submarines.
«…it will be a pioneering, fascinating housing model, an increasingly cosmopolitan ‘modus vivendi’ where everyday life will become increasingly ‘nomadic’ for some and ‘remotely’ will trace a new ‘modus habitandi’». Francesca Muzio
The outer partition that defines the foyer of the forward swimming pool highlights the circularity in the design through the use of cladding with broad horizontal strips alternating with thin brise soleil slats that, together with the sofa’s striped textiles, accentuate the effect of the centripetal curve of movement along the curvilinear trajectory that envelops the space and attracts the observer towards the centre of the swimming pool to then transport them to the large central cut of the staircase that links the lounge to the upper deck. The guardrail/parapet rises free and proud from the frame, and with no continuity in solutions, underscoring the extension of the vanishing lines and the distances that pinpoint, with a marked line of teak on the gunwale. This psychological tool allows the eye to sense, throughout its trajectory, the degree of vitality and enormous extension of the space on board. Ulyssia certainly explores forms and new expressions of modernity, and in its own formal and functional expression, looks for that point of equilibrium between the perfectly flat horizon line at sea and the absence of references, or pre-existing things, or design footholds that a blank sheet looks for.
(Ulyssia – Beyond all limits – Barchemagazine.com – Excerpted from Barche, October 2025)
