Jellyfish on the beach are disgusting puddles of slime. In the water, they're some of the most sublimely graceful and elegant forms I can think of. It's all about the medium: in water, there's no gravity, no need for rigidity; life is all about flexibility, transparency, ethereality.

I read a book about oak recently. Oak has been the favored wood for the European shipbuilding tradition. The author argues that the classic sailing ships developed out of how Europeans constructed wooden buildings: they're based on a solid, rigid frame of ribs, covered with a non-structural plank skin, much as one would build a timber-framed house to resist the force of gravity.

Certain other types of boats, however, are more analagous to the jellyfish. Viking longboats were a monocoque of planks riveted edge to edge, with no internal frame. This allowed them to twist and flex with the motions of water, giving them a remarkable combination of speed, agility and durability.

The inuit kayak is another example of boatbuilding in a fluid medium. The flexible skin and lashed skeleton create a dynamic, moving form. This is "boat" stripped down to its essence.

With the Oru, I'm interested in ways of making boats more like jellyfish- if not functionally, then trying to capture that sense of thinness, transparency, fluidity and luminosity- the things that intuitively draw us to water.