History in the Making - Part 1 - Art and Conception III

The Interior Design

As mentioned in last weeks post a important addition to the team was made in October 1991 when Robert Tillberg was appointed as coordinating architect to Project Gemini as he explained
“The most important period was before the contract, when I was the only person working with P&O’s team on Gemini/Oriana. That was when we laid the plans and decided the functions of the different rooms and their ambiance.”

Robert Tillberg

Tillberg’s brief was effectively what P&O had come up with in the early planning stages, a ships interior that was British in character yet in its design modern.
“When the contract was signed, P&O and I decided to give some of the public rooms to other architects.”
These were British architect John McNeece to work on some of the public rooms and Norwegian Petter Yran to work on the cabins, both experts in their field of work.
In order to get an idea of exactly what was needed Tillberg took two trips onboard Canberra to get a feel for what was required
Of the experience he said “ I was very impressed by: no much by the ship, because she is a old ship and had been altered and added , but I was impressed by the atmosphere onboard”.
It was now that Tillberg had a better view of what his designs should incorporate.

Cutaway image of Oriana as completed.

The first public space he began working on was perhaps one of the most important for the ship, the area which would give the passenger their first impression of life onboard ORIANA, the atrium.
Standing 4 storeys tall at the heart of ORIANA the atrium's’ centrepiece is a elegant curved spiral staircase which sweeps from D Deck to F Deck.
Behind the staircase set into a marble wall is a waterfall that runs the entire height of the atrium emptying into a pool beneath the last flight of the staircase.

Each level of the atrium has its own name which contains some of the ships amenities, beginning on F Deck and working up they are, Garden Court which contains the reception desk, E Deck - Queens Court that holds the lower level of Knightsbridge shopping along with the emporium shop,
Promenade Deck- Royal Court which contains the upper level Knightsbridge shopping,

E Deck shopping area

D Deck- Tiffany Court which contains Tiffany’s Bar which allows passengers to enjoy a wide ranges of drinks while relaxing under a stained glass tiffany styled art deco ceiling.Tiffanys

Although the atrium is indeed a beautiful and elegant introduction to the style of Oriana passengers who are more accustomed to the North American cruise market might find it lacking in the glitz and glamour those ships feature as standard, it is the perfect realisation of P&O’s concept, refined good taste and above all very British in character.

Cabins

While Robert Tillberg worked with John McNeece on the public areas Petter Yran worked on what was required from the most important rooms onboard ORIANA the passengers cabins,
After being given the basic brief from Tillberg he was free to do what he wanted to achieve the final product.
To begin with it was necessary to look at what was required from the cabins both decoratively and from a practical point of view,
Firstly the cabins needed to welcoming to the passengers and inevitably have to give the atmosphere fitting of a premier cruise ship also in order to accommodate ORIANA’s longer cruises the cabins would require a
large amount of storage space, this is achieved by each cabin having a minimum of 12 draws for clothes storage with a further two in a unit next to each bed and a full height wardrobe with capacity for shirts, suits, and evening dresses.
As with the rest of the ship the cabins had to reflect a unique style of their own, at the time with most ships entering service for the North American market the trend was for cabins to be scaled down versions of hotel rooms,
“Virtually all new cruise ships today are designed for the North American Market” Yarn commented on being interviewed at the time
“ I have never known before of any cruise ship in the world where 96-97 per cent of the passengers would be British”
“When they come onboard a ship they expect the interiors to look more ship like and functional, whereas the Americans expect a floating hotel.”
So for the overall look of the cabins he adopted a ship like design making use of as much wood and wood laminates as possible and avoiding the use of shape edges around cabin furniture
Another requirement for cabins was of course for all to have on-suite bathroom facilities a feature that was lacking in parts of Canberra’s accommodation due to the original nature of the venerable liner.
Another feature to note about ORIANA’s cabins bathrooms is the number which include a bath, about 50 % of the bath rooms do, this is significantly higher number than would be found on a US market ship where the number would be 20 - 30 per cent,
　Of the 914 cabins on board 594 are outside cabins, 118 include balconies of these 8 are suites and 16 are mini-suites, the remaining 320 cabins onboard are inside cabins.


As P&O proudly said in the official book of "ORIANA, From Dream To Reality, “the ship is a one-class ship: first class, unlike other prestigious ships that had gone before her if you book the cheapest grade of cabin or the most expensive suite you are guaranteed to receive the same high standards of service."

Public Rooms

Onboard ORIANA the public rooms are located on Sun Deck, Lido Deck, D deck, Promenade Deck and the main restaurants on Deck E
Tillberg’s aim with the interiors was to create a feeling of openness and to emphasize the size of ship this most apparent the public rooms on the upper decks these are The Crows Nest , Medina room and Cyber Study on the Sun Deck, The Gymnasium, health spa, Al fresco Pizzeria and The Conservatory buffet restaurant on the Lido deck.
This was achieved by using where ever possible large floor to ceiling windows, creating spaces which allow a maximum amount sunlight and of course stunning views.
This is creates the perfect ambiance for The Crows Nest bar, a bar with views that no other onboard no other can rival,
Named after the similarly used bar on Canberra The Crows Nest’s design is inspired by nautical themes and includes a authentic classic style ships compass and a model of one of P&O’s R Class ships built in the mid 1920s and to add a to add a unique aspect the individual seating all has the word ORIANA and the previous ORIANA’s badge proudly displayed.
A room that always attracts many passengers, the sights t o behold from here very from the Norwegian Fjords to the Panama Canal or just to watch the sunset over the open seas.

One deck below The Crows Nest is ORIANA’s health and fitness spa complex -The Oasis Spa, also including the ships Gymnasium this is another area which makes use of floor to ceiling windows,
To allow for the passenger to relax completely the Spa includes: Steam room, a Jacuzzi, a hair and beauty salon, massage treatment rooms.
　 Another room onboard which bespeaks the origins of ORIANA, is Andersons located on the promenade deck.
Named after Arthur Anderson one of the founders of P&O the room takes its inspiration from the late 19th/early 20th century London clubs and with its wood panelling and traditional furniture could easily have fitted in onboard a Edwardian ocean liner.
The room features as a tribute to its namesake a bronze relief depicting Anderson.

Andersons

Further aft on the promenade deck is Harlequins one of the rooms given to John McNeece, ORIANA’s ballroom during the day and early evening, it changes function to that of nightclub during the later hours.
To welcome passengers to dance in Harlequins a statue of Harlequin and Columbine dancing stands guard at the entrance.
Featuring the largest dance floor in the P&O Cruises fleet, Harlequins continues the nautical/exploration theme by having a large compass motif at its centre all of which goes in to making this the most popular nightspot onboard.
Continuing aft on the promenade is another of McNeece’s rooms the onboard sports bar Lords Tavern as the name suggests its theme is a cricket one, a tribute both to the much loved game and to the Cricketers Tavern onboard Canberra which over the years had become one of the liners most popular venues.
In order to create a feel of a sports bar McNeece used many references to cricket, careful examination of the bar will reveal that the ends are shaped as cricket balls, the carpet in part of the room is designed to look like a cricket pitch and the most obvious feature aside form the memorabilia on the walls is a large mural depicting Lords cricket ground.
Being typically British in it is decorative style its described by some as being one of the only true examples of a authentic British styled bar at sea.

Lords Tavern

By far the largest room on the promenade deck is the Theatre Royal, located at the forward end of the deck, the 650 seat theatre offers full theatre style productions courtesy of The headliners, P&O's own theatre company, in keeping with the theme of entertainment the two entrances to the theatre are lined with photos of legendary film and theatre stars.`To keep the passengers comfortable the room is heated and cooled by vents on the back of the seats.
Heading up to D Deck where more of the public rooms are located on this Deck is as mentioned before Tiffanys, Oriana Rhodes Restaurants, originally designed as the Curzon Room a Piano recital room , the Chaplin’s Cinema, Library and writing room and at the aft end of the deck the children’s facilities, which are to be removed in November this year.
Named after Charlie Chaplin, the cinema with a capacity of 200 is used to show modern and classic films but also is used to host lectures.
To have a dedicated cinema on board a modern cruise ship is actually quite a rarity. To reflect the nature of Chaplin himself passengers are greeted by not one but two statues of Chaplin in character as "The Tramp"

Chaplins Cinema and Peter Pans children's area.

Chaplins entrance

The library and Thackeray writing room are two more rooms to give a special mention to, named after the renowned English writer William Makepeace Thackeray who once sailed on one of P&O's early ships Tagus the two rooms furniture and bookshelves were designed by the nephew of her Majesty the Queen, David Linley, the room gives a relaxed atmosphere within its wooden panels to read a book or magazine or to write letters home about your travels.

Restaurants

Onboard ORIANA there are two main restaurants The Peninsular and The Oriental. The Peninsular which seats 400 passengers at one time is located midships and The Oriental which seats 500 passengers is aft, in decorative style both have a similar style with mirrored ceiling panel and much and matching carpets and seating. The Peninsular Restaurant's colour scheme features a tasteful light green, and light coloured wood work, the forward walls are mirrored to increase the sense of openness, however the rooms most unique feature is a painting that covers the entire centre of the aft wall showing The Journey of Odysseus. The overall effects creates a bright and airy environment with unique Art Deco inspired lamps of the tables to help create sophisticated atmosphere. The Peninsular Restaurant

The Oriental Restaurant located in the very stern is of similar style to that of Peninsular however the colour scheme is red with darker wood, however the most stunning feature here is not a work of art instead the room boasts sea views on three sides.

The Oriental Restaurant

ORIANA also feature three other dining venues, The Conservatory buffet, Al Frescos Pizzeria, both located on the lido deck and Oriana Rhodes located on D Deck, Oriana Rhodes is the restaurant of chef Gary Rhodes who often travels onborad,The room was formerly The Curzon room a music venue where Piano recitals could be heard on most nights. As hopefully can be seen words alone can not do ORIANA justice, but hopefully we have created some idea what thought went into creating the great lady and the thought process her designers also went through.
The design work they did although aimed at the British market has become popular with not only the target market but as well other nationalities among them Australian, Portuguese, Spanish and South African, a real tribute to the effort which was put into creating ORIANA.
Development: Steve Martin.
Photos copyright P&O Cruises & Meyer Werft.Next week arrives the first post of Part 2 of "History in the Making" - Construction. Not to be missed!

History in the Making - Part 1 - Art and Conception II

Early Designs and Concept

While P&O concerned its self with potential shipyards to invite to tender for the ships the construction it also had the task of deciding what was required form the preposed ship both in terms of technical aspects and what the ship could of its passengers.

Effectivly what was the concept for the new ship?

The ship was foreseen in a role similar to that which Canberra occupied currently, 1 & 2 week cruises to the Atlantic Islands, Baltic, Norwegian Fjords & Mediterranean with longer cruises visiting the US and the Caribbean and the famed 3 month world cruise.

For this to be achievable it was calculated the new ship would be required to have a service speed of around 24 knots and be able to maintain the speed in all but the most serve weather conditions, making it the fastest passenger ship built since Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 and the fastest purpose built cruise ship ever constructed, also to accomodate this the ship would need to have a large fuel and fresh water capacity to allow for longer periods between ports.

Another key feature to the success of the new ship would be hull design, most of cruise ships in development at the time were designed for regional cruising in the caribbean with only occasional ocean crossings, the new ship with its yearly world cruise and being home ported in Southampton would often encounter some of the most severe seas from the North Atlantic on crossings to the North Sea and Bay of Biscay on regular cruises.

Other features of the ship would be, a shallower draught in comparison to Canberra to allow access to a larger number of ports, a maximum beam of 32.2 metres.
And of course for passenger comfort minimal engine noise and vibration.
From the passengers point of view the most important decisions were regarding the new ships interiors, although no serious thought would put towards this aspect of design until a much later stage P&O did take the unusual step of defining that the ship should include at least 21 public rooms the same number as onboard Canberra.
It had been calculated by P&O that when the ship would be operating out Southampton on regular cruises that 98% to 99% of the passengers would be British with the remaining passengers being from Europe and on world cruises 78% British with the remainder being Australian, North American & South African.
In the company’s opinion this justified making the ship as far as possible British in character.

Aside from what the company’s needs the ships design would be governed by its ability to conform to maritime law.

The most important of these being SOLAS but also required if the ship was to enter US ports and for the ship to comply with US coastguard and department of health regulations.
This formed the basic concept of the new ship a large modern high speed luxurious super liner designed to combine the grace of the ocean liners with the requirements of a purpose built modern cruise ship, to quote P&O’s design brief “Interior and external balancing traditional and contemporary images”.
Having sent out the invitations to tender for construction in December 1989 by early 1990 P&O had its replies.
The most promising of these was from the Bremerhaven based yard of Lloyd Werft which P&O entered negotiations with.
The drawings produced by the yard were of roughly the right dimensions and with a rather avant-garde styling it certainly looked modern and perhaps with some more work the designs would be to P&O’s liking.

Lloyd Werft profile drawing for Project Gemini

After pleasing initial talks things rapidly came to halt when it became clear that the projected price of the proposed design exceeded the budget that P&O had allocated to the development and construction of the new ship.

With this setback P&O looked to the other yards who replied but in turn found each to be in excess of their budget and it was with great reluctance P&O put Project Gemini on hold indefinitely.
The design work that was done by Lloyd Werft later was further developed by their parent company Bremer Vulkan and in 1991 was displayed by them at a Cruise and Ferry convention in London as a cruise ship concept.
Although not exactly as designed the ship would eventually be built as Costa Victoria in 1996.

Costa Victoria in Funchal, Madeira Photo Copyright João Abreu.

New concept drawings and contract

Six months later P&O handed the work that been done on Project Gemini to another of its subsidiaries the Monaco based ISTS to look at.
ISTS’s project director Charles Arkinstall reviewed the concept drawings and the proposals which had been submitted and found the reason for them being over budget was that was the concept was far too large for the proposed amount of passengers which was around 1,800, with this revelation Charles Arkinstall began to redraw the concept drawings in October 1990. By the beginning of summer 1991 all the redrawing had been completed and the new specifications showed a ship of around 67,000 tons still with a maximum passenger capacity of 1900.
Having thoroughly examined the replies they had from the 12 shipyards the year before it was decided to ask two yards to re-quote.
Meyer Werft and the Finnish yard obliged and two months later, both sets of drawings were received and studied in depth , P&O found the Finnish ship too small but the Meyer Werft ship seemed to meet each requirement.
The drawings showed a ship of around 69,000 tons ,260 metres in length and a width of 32.2 with 14 decks and 26 public rooms.

The drawings also had a element of Canberra’s design most notably in the rounded bridge and superstructure front. Although there was still much work to do refining the finer details the ship it was clear that this was exactly what P&O had been looking for. Meyer Werft concept drawing for Project Gemini Copyright: © Meyer Werft

While work continued P&O began to assemble a team of people from across the company who would be involved with the final design and construction stages, some of these will be introduced in a later in our articles.
In October 1991 Swedish marine designer Robert Tillberg was appointed as coordinating architect, most of his work would be on the interiors but he as he explained added some styling “We also had an influence on the outline of the ship. Our task was to create a ship that had a certain affinity with the Canberra so that when you look at the new ship you immediately see that she is from the same family.”
“This was done in subtle ways for example in the design of the funnel. With Canberra there are twin funnels, but with this ship we designed the one funnel to suggest two.”

© William H Miller

Another feature Tillberg adapted for inclusion in the design was the spacers between the lifeboats, which were reclined back in a similar way to Canberra.
With the design work ongoing there was important matter which had yet to be decided on, the name of the new vessel.
In the earliest stages of Project Gemini the name Canberra II had been suggested although this had never been a seriously considered, in fact hundreds of names had been suggested ranging from Chusan to Vectis.
However in the end it came down to just two names, P&O Cruises Managing Director Tim Harris unable to decide between the two took the suggestions to the Chairman of The P&O Group Lord Sterling of Plaistow. Arcadia or Oriana, both names were famous within P&O and among its passengers, but which would be most popular? It did not take long before Lord Sterling chose Oriana , the name of the last of the Orient liners and for many years Canberra’s running mate until being transferred to P&O’s Australia operations and then retired in 1986.
All agreed that right choice had been made, the decision was also made that the name would not be known by the public until the day of the keel laying.
Two months later in December 1991 with all at P&O and Meyer Werft pleased with conditions laid down, they officially signed a contract for the construction of the ship.
For both this was extremely good news P&O’s new era was within sight and for Meyer Werft it would give them the honour of building the largest ship built Germany in 8 decades.
Development: Steve Martin.
Next week find out how ORIANA's designer Robert Tillberg, got his main ideas for the ship's interiors with "The Interior Design".

History in the Making - Part 1 - Art and Conception

Why was ORIANA required?

In 1988 a meeting of the directors of P&O Cruises was held to discuss the direction of the company over the next 5 year period. At this time it had been predicted by cruise industry experts that the number of cruise passengers was to rapidly increase.
This increase which had already been felt by the company’s American based subsidiary Princess Cruise. The North American market was mainly focused in the Caribbean and also saw many British passengers head across the Atlantic to join the ships on so called fly cruises. At the same time a increase of passenger bookings was seen in the UK based operations sole ship the veteran liner Canberra.
From the view point of the public Canberra had become something of a British institution since the ships role in the Falklands War. The valiant ship was rated as one of the most popular ships to cruise on and accounted for 45% of all cruises that departed from or arrived in a UK port.
Canberra in Funchal, Madeira 18 October 1980.
However the reality that faced P&O was somewhat different, despite the popularity of the ship after 27 years in service she was beginning to suffer age related technical problems with the turbo-electric propulsion machinery and with high maintenance costs was becoming increasingly expensive to keep in cruise service.
When compared to the last new build P&O had undertaken Royal Princess 4 years earlier the differences and advantages of a modern ship with more advanced technology could be clearly seen. Of a similar tonnage to Canberra at 22 knots the ship consumed 70 tons of fuel per day compared to Canberra’s 250 tons per day at 20 knots.Princess’s Royal Princess
With these facts the decision was taken to transfer Sea Princess (former Kungsholm for Swedish America Line) back to the UK market to handle the increase in passenger numbers on a short term basis.Sea Princess in Princess livery
For the longer term it was decided to begin a study into the possibility to built a new ship to serve exclusively for the British market.

“Gemini”

Given the name Project Gemini the study took to account in all aspects associated with building a new ship concluded in 1989 and its finding were that by the early 1990s P&O’s passenger numbers would have risen to such a level that building a newer larger ship would be a option if certain conditions were met these included:

-The ship would need to be of at least 50,000 tons.

-For the cruising role envisioned for the new ship it would need to have a higher speed than is usually associated with cruise ships.

With the information it needed P&O turned to its subsidiary company Three Quays Maritime Services to start drawing up general arrangement drawings for the new ship and inviting shipyards to tender for the new liners construction.
Although it may seem premature for a company to be looking to shipyards before even the most basic design work had been completed but as P&O’s marketing director David Dingle said at the time “ Any large and successful cruise line should always have plans available, opportunities to order very greatly, according to exchange rates, shipyard availability and financial packages available . Companies must have plans ready to take advantage at any time”
By the end of 1989 letters had been sent out to 12 shipyards across Europe including three British ones which P&O ideally would want to build the ship.
Due to the decline of British Shipbuilding none of the yards were able to accept, of those that did respond three proposals seemed promising one a unnamed yard in Finland and the others both in Germany they were Lloyd Werft of Bremerhaven and Meyer Werft of Papenburg.So with over 150 years of experience behind them P&O embarked on their latest challenge to build its largest and most luxurious ship, a ship to proudly take P&O and British cruising into the 21st century.
Development: © Steve Martin.
Don't miss next week the second post of Part 1-Art and Conception, Early Designs and Concept.