A private jet cabin inspired by Japanese design

2025

Sakura is my entry for Flexjet's Project LXi, a competition to reimagine the cabin of a Gulfstream G650. The prize was $100,000, and Flexjet would build the winning design as one of its LXi cabin collections. I drew on Japanese design and nature to make the cabin feel calm.

I taught myself 3ds Max to build the cabin and render it.

View original submission, opens in a new tab

Role: Concept and 3D
Team: Designer (me)
Timeline: Early 2025
Scope: Competition

Learning 3D

Building the concept in 3D

A mood board set the visual direction, but I needed to see the materials inside the cabin to judge their scale and balance.

I started with an existing G650 model in 3ds Max and rearranged the interior to match Flexjet’s layout. The original model was missing parts the brief required, like the pullout seat section, so I built those myself.

With the cabin built, I could try each material in place and get a real sense of how it would feel in person.

The cabin model in 3ds Max, untextured and grey: a cutaway of the fuselage with the lounge sofa, rows of club seats with tables, and the galley with its sink and drawers at the front, the scene's object list on the left.

The cabin model untextured, all in grey: a seat back in the foreground, round windows along the wall, a run of cabinets beneath them, a sofa and club seats toward the bulkhead at the back.

The same view rendered: glossy dark elm cabinets, light leather seats, one with an indigo back, the blossom carpet down the aisle and the black charred wood bulkhead at the back.

Palette

Giving each material a purpose

I used Ma, the space between things, and Shibui, an understated kind of beauty, to weigh open space against texture and detail.

Charred wood inspired by Shou Sugi Ban covers the rear bulkhead. Dark elm runs through the cabinets and tables, with stone on the galley counter, and the indigo leather on the seat sides comes from the deep blues of Aizome dyeing. Light leather seats and white walls balance the darker finishes and keep the cabin open.

The carpet ties everything together with the cherry blossom, Japan’s unofficial national flower and the project’s namesake. Sakura only bloom for a week or two, and in Japan that’s the point. They’re a reminder to slow down and enjoy a moment while it lasts, which is what I wanted the cabin to offer between takeoff and landing. I made the pattern with generative AI, pink petals scattered across deep blue, and it’s the only movement in an otherwise still cabin.

The material palette on cream: a tall panel of black charred wood with a cracked, alligator texture, beside 3 stacked swatches of dark elm, deep indigo leather and grey stone. — Charred wood, beside dark elm, indigo leather, and stone.

2 images side by side on cream. Left, the carpet's pattern on its own: soft pink cherry blossoms and thin dark branches drifting across brushed layers of deep and pale blue. Right, the same carpet in the cabin, running down the aisle between light leather seats and dark wood toward the galley.

Final cabin

From mood board to finished cabin

The entry didn’t advance to the next round, but it gave me a new skill in 3D and a different kind of design to work in.

The middle of the cabin from beside the aisle: dark wood cabinets along the left wall, a light lounge sofa behind them, and a pair of light quilted leather seats facing a glossy dark wood table on the right, under white walls and a lit ceiling.

2 renders side by side on cream. Left, the forward cabin: 2 light leather seats at a dark wood table in front of the galley, walled in glossy dark elm. Right, a pair of light quilted seats by a window behind a dark elm table, over the blossom carpet.

The lounge at the back of the cabin: a light grey sofa with dark cushions on the left and a single quilted leather seat at a glossy dark wood table on the right, in front of the black charred wood bulkhead and its screen.