The first underwater lounge on board a cruise ship
Ponant, the French specialist in luxury cruises and mainly in 5-star polar expeditions, will launch in 2018 the Lapérouse, the world's first cruise ship with a multi-sensory underwater space, christened Blue Eye. It will also be the first of four sisterships in the new Ponant Explorers series, which will be used for tropical and subtropical expeditions. The next three yachts Le Champlain, Le Bougainville and Le Dumont-d'Urville will also be equipped with this innovation. They pay homage to the great French explorers by carrying passengers in lands that are still secret and inaccessible to the largest units. Le Lapérouse and Le Champlain will join the fleet in 2018, followed by Le Bougainville and Le Dumont-d'Urville in 2019.
The Blue Eye is an underwater saloon, located within the hull, below the waterline, accessible to all passengers. It is Jacques Rougerie, an academic architect with a passion for the sea, who designed this lounge, with the aim of making passengers perceive and feel the underwater world. "The cutting-edge technology developed with Ponant offers passengers the opportunity to be the explorers of modern times, in the wake of Jules Verne, Jacques-Yves Cousteau or the great adventurers. They will be able to observe the fauna and flora of this underwater world and discover its sounds. The Blue Eye lounge will be sounded by Michel Redolfi to reveal to passengers the astonishing listening skills of their bodies. For the first time in the world, during a cruise, the public will be able to "feel" and be at the heart of an underwater world. All their senses will be called upon" explained the architect.
Three innovative concepts in one room
Bionics and biomimicry
Jacques Rougerie determined the lines of force underlying the design of the underwater lounge by drawing his inspiration from the observation of nature. Thus, the graphic references - the lines of the salon, the positioning of the body, the furniture - evoke cetaceans and jellyfish. Attention is also drawn to the two portholes, in the shape of a cetacean's eye, wide open to the underwater world. Touches of light will be scattered throughout the space, while the wall décor will give way to integrated digital screens that project live images filmed by 3 underwater cameras. A concept reminiscent of nemo Hall the first Imax movie theater aboard a superyacht.
The staging of the sound is entrusted to contemporary music composer and sound design expert Michel Redolfi. The sound design, the result of the composer's research into underwater music, will immerse passengers in an aquatic immersion experience. Comfortably installed, guests will be able to listen to the underwater world thanks to hydrophones (a microphone that can be used underwater), developed in consultation with Ifremer specialists, integrated under the keel. Sounds from the seabed are thus picked up over a radius of five kilometres and transmitted live into the lounge in the form of acoustic waves.
This immersive sound experience will be felt even in vibrating Body Listening sofas. With the combination of image and sound, passengers will be able to get closer to marine mammals, which they will be able to see from the portholes. The experience will also be declined during underwater concerts broadcast at sea or in the swimming pool.
The underwater, non-intrusive searchlights, specially developed for the Ponant Explorers series, make it possible to observe, without risk to the marine biosphere, the seabed and photoluminescent organisms from the Blue Eye lounge, but also from the outside decks, balconies and marina.
