Designing a Quieter Future: Inside Chorus and the Rise of Sustainable Boating
- Jan 23
- 2 min read
On the still waters of the Thames, in London’s historic Docklands, a new chapter in British boatbuilding is quietly taking shape. Chorus, a sustainable marine design company founded by celebrated designer Christopher Duffy, is reimagining what it means to be on the water: replacing noise, fumes, and excess with silence, solar power, and considered design. With its first investment round now secured, Chorus is moving from vision to reality, entering the prototype phase for a new generation of low-carbon electric boats.
For Duffy, this venture is both professional evolution and personal return. Best known for two decades of boundary-pushing furniture design under Duffy London, including globally recognised pieces such as the Abyss Table, boats were his first love long before luxury interiors. Growing up immersed in water sports, from sailing to wakeboarding, Duffy always felt a deep connection to life on the water. Chorus represents the point where that passion converges with design maturity, environmental urgency, and technological possibility.
The company’s debut models, including the solar-assisted electric day boat Voltis, are built around a simple but radical idea: boating should enhance, not dominate, its environment. Chorus vessels are fully electric, near-silent, and constructed using bio-based composites, bamboo, and recycled metals. Lightweight and carefully engineered, they offer a serene experience that reconnects passengers with the elemental pleasure of water itself, rather than overpowering it with engines and emissions.
This philosophy was shaped in part by an unexpected origin story. Early concepts grew from a hospitality project in Bali, where Duffy’s studio was exploring the use of local materials such as bamboo and regional craft traditions. The question arose: what if those same principles, local materials, renewable resources, and human-scale craftsmanship, were applied to boats? From that moment, the idea gathered momentum, evolving from rough studio models into scalable prototypes destined for water testing on the Thames.
Chorus’s base in Silvertown is no accident. Once a centre of British shipbuilding, the Royal Docks now house the company’s purpose-built factory and design studio, standing just metres from the river. Here, traditional maritime heritage meets advanced fabrication techniques such as 3D-printed components and precision aluminium prototyping. The ambition extends beyond a single workshop: the factory itself is conceived as a blueprint, designed to be replicated globally to increase production and accelerate the replacement of fossil-fuelled boats worldwide.
The newly secured investment will fund the build of Chorus’s first functional prototypes, refine production methods, and deepen collaborations with marine engineers and sustainability researchers. It marks a crucial milestone in a sector poised for rapid growth, as electric mobility expands from roads to waterways.
Yet for all the technology and strategy, Chorus remains rooted in a deeply human motivation. Duffy speaks openly about becoming a father and the responsibility that brings, about designing not just beautiful objects, but systems that actively benefit the world his child will inherit. In that sense, Chorus is less about luxury as excess, and more about luxury as thoughtfulness: calm over speed, longevity over disposability, and harmony over dominance.
As Chorus moves from prototype to production, it offers a compelling vision of the future of boating, one where innovation whispers rather than roars, and where design becomes a quiet force for environmental repair rather than depletion.
