Metamorphosis - Cruise Ship Portal

down the length of the ship,” Wilson says “I
think we work in every fire zone but that is
what makes it fun. It brings you back to the
core understanding of what the brand is and
how the ships work and how we can make
them better.”
“
The designer says that his team have the
advantage of not being cruise executives,
allowing them to step outside of the box and
approach design challenges differently.
Of all the facilities the design practice
worked on, the AquaTheater is perhaps the
most novel and was the most challenging to
design. “We had no map to follow,” says
Wilson of the venue, which has the largest
saltwater pool of any cruise ship at sea. “We
very much had to invent solutions to problems
that we didn’t know existed a month earlier.”
The venue’s stage engineering and
complex hydraulics allow the depth of the
pool to rise and fall to adapt to each
performance. “The AquaTheater evolved
when the shipyard first proposed a single hall
with parallel superstructures with courtyards
We can almost forecast what ideas will stick
and what ones won’t, which allows us to focus
on innovations that can be executed.
Central Park (above) and the AquaTheater (right).
in the middle,” he explains. “The obvious
spatial approach was to let that courtyard
open up to the sea and create a big open
space for an outdoor performance venue.”
Wilson Butler proposed that the design
should try to integrate a pool into a
performance venue so that it has a 20-hour
use. “We put one and one together,” says
Wilson. “If we have a pool we should
capitalise on it and make it into a
performance space.” Together with the
entertainment staff at Royal Caribbean, the
team started to brainstorm and
devised a venue that gave the
producers and staff considerable
creative flexibility.
However, there were major
hurdles to overcome in the design
of the AquaTheater, in particular
Insight > Interior design
how to contain 135,000gal of water in the aft
pool tank. Even when the seas are relatively
calm water can still flood onto the deck.
“When we began we didn’t anticipate that
we would have wave or wind problems but
as they pop up we addressed them and
figured out creative, clever solutions to
problems, which appear rather seamless
now,” he says.
The team ingeniously reduced wave
motion by designing a retractable wall in the
middle of the pool that can rise up to the
surface, depending on how rough the seas
are, and effectively split the volume in half.
There are green and red lights to make
performers aware of when the wall is up.
Park life
Wilson Butler has a history of overcoming
obstacles on board cruise ships. On its first
project with Royal Caribbean, it designed the
Studio B ice rink on the Liberty of the Seas,
which remains level, even in bad weather.
The idea behind the AquaTheater was to
create a unique passenger experience. With
the ocean as a backdrop, the theatre features
LED-lit fountain jets and diving platforms. It
is an impressive performance stage for aerial
acrobatics, synchronised swimming, highdiving
and ballet backed up with an
advanced technology suite to manage the
choreography, lighting and music. The
AquaTheater has three custom lifts, which
are built into the pool that shuttles performers
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