TLB Architecture

From Brest and in love with anything that floats, Tanguy Le Bihan created the TLB naval architecture office in 2006. TLB has made a name for itself as a highly innovative office and specialises in hull work, mainly on motorboats, to increase energy performance. His two watchwords are elegance and performance.

Tanguy Le Bihan :

Apart from developing boats for clients we assist, such as Beneteau, we sometimes work on slightly crazy projects that are a little out of the box. They may be crazy, but they do help make progress in research and they widen the field of possibilities. Prompted by the desire to create new things and make progress, we have worked on innovatively designed sailing yachts, with, for example, a very straight bow and a highly specific hull to front.
In 2008, we created an all-carbon and electric motor-powered trimaran: Odonata. We developed this prototype in our garage in Brittany and showed it at the Nautic boat show in Paris. It combines the pleasure of sailing with virtually zero energy consumption and the complete absence of emissions. I remember, when I talked about it to Patrick Tableau, in charge of motorboats development at Beneteau, he said:  “Have you seen electric trucks?”

However, we have come a long way since in how we consider electricity. It is in the back of my mind, while still believing that the market is not ready yet, particularly since this type of technology is still very expensive and also because the major limitation of electricity in motor boating is speed. Whatever one might say, motorboat customers like to go fast. However, I still believe that there is a perfect connection between the sailing yacht and the motorboat and that a part of our future lies here.