He was born in the USA, trained in Peru, worked in Britain and ended up as a world-class yacht designer with the Maltese Falcon alone being enough to cement his name in history forever
Ken Freivokh was born in Los Angeles, California, to a French father and a Chilean mother. Soon they moved to Lima, Peru, where the future designer grew up and got his bachelor’s degree in engineering and master’s in architecture. He was lucky to win a Duke of Edinburgh scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art’s school of engineering in London. Although the voyage across the ocean was paid for, he had to make it on board a cargo ship. Three weeks of Spartan living conditions and four severe storms could have put anyone off the sea. Yet Freivokh, with his characteristic stubbornness, was simply captivated by the ocean.
Upon finishing his studies in 1972, but the newly minted Master of Design (engineering) had intended to return to Latin America, but the Old World had a number of tempting job opportunities for him – like a project to extend the British Museum.
One should note here that by this time, he was already an avid sailor and would devote part of his office hours to designing custom modifications for the boat he had purchased from Hunter Boats. Noticing this, his boss summoned the designer to his office. Instead of a reprimand that he expected, Ken was relieved to hear that his manager wanted to order the same model: he turned out to be a sailor, too, and appreciated the modifications. Later on, other clients began asking the shipyard for this modernized version, so Hunter Boats invited Freivokh to design an entire line. And that is how his career in yacht design started.
Officially, Ken Freivokh Design is said to have been founded in 2008. Yet commissions had been arriving with enviable regularity long before that, as the designer’s name had already become a brand. Freivokh collaborated with such renowned motor yacht builders as Azimut, Fairline, Oceanco, Sunseeker, and designed sailing boats for Discovery Yachts, Dream Ship Victory (for unique large wooden projects), Najad and Perini Navi.
Ken has been an active and highly skilled offshore racer since his youth, competing in most of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s regattas, including the infamous 1979 Fastnet Race, where only 85 yachts out of 303 could make it to the finish line. In short, he knows sailing firsthand, and when drafting sailboat designs, he has a perfect understanding of what he is doing.
It is hardly surprising that Perini Navi entrusted him with the Maltese Falcon project, which was built in 2006 and became a revolution in sailing rig design. The 88-meter yacht featuring three 58-meter masts has no conventional standing rigging whatsoever, but a radically new DynaRig system developed by Dykstra Naval Architects. Fifteen square sails, wound around internal rollers, deploy outward through the slots in the yardarms, while the masts themselves can rotate to the optimal angle to catch the wind. There is no need for a large crew: the sails with a total area of 2,400 sq.m can be set and furled in just six minutes at the touch of a button.
The project caused a lot of controversy. Some viewed it as an interesting but unviable experiment. However, the concept was taken further with the construction of the 106-meter Black Pearl at the Oceanco shipyard in 2018. She featured the same rig and exterior created by Ken Freivokh Design.
“From a teaspoon to a skyscraper, basic design principles are always the same,’ Freivokh says. “It’s about analysing the requirements of something and then processing the component parts and their relationship to other parts.”
Freivokh had lots of different hobbies throughout his life: rally racing, motorcycles (his modified Harley-Davidsons took part in Daytona Bike Week), radio-controlled helicopters, diving, travelling the globe to see the wildlife... But ultimately, his main passion is... raising alpacas – the animals that are iconic for his native Peru. Together with his wife Liz, who also happens to be his partner in his design studio, they bought an estate in southern England and imported nine animals from overseas. Today, the herd numbers a hundred. The Freivokhs’ farm runs the Artwork Alpacas breeding program, selling elite animals to breeders abroad and supplying top-quality fiber to manufacturers of premium clothing like Loro Piana.
But his love of the sea is definitely not gone. Ken Freivokh Design, headquartered in Hampshire, UK, is multidisciplinary and continues to work successfully with clients worldwide, designing both exteriors and interiors of sailing and motor superyachts.
And Freivokh keeps using his original pallet of materials, including the sky, the sea and the technology.
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