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Interview with Vallicelli Yacht Design

Architect, professor of Industrial Design, quintessential Italian designer and one of today’s most influential experts (he defined “nautical” in Italy’s Treccani Encyclopaedia), despite a star-studded CV, Andrea Vallicelli has maintained the freshness of those who know their trade but never boast. In just an hour, he tells stories, ignites ideas, inspires to think as big as the boats bearing his unmistakable style: elegant and limitless.

Vallicelli
Andrea Vallicelli

He and Alessandro Nazareth have defined a benchmark, not just for yacht design, but for sailing. Nazareth is Chairman of the International Technical Committee of the Offshore Racing Congress, defining rating rules for handicap categories. Boats the likes of Azzurra and Brava, but also the most successful One Ton yachts ever designed, bear their signature. 

Vallicelli
Alessandro Nazareth

Who is Andrea Vallicelli today?

“I tell my story through the studio and its transformation over twenty years. Where we deal with motorboats for the industry, and design both serial products and prototypes from 15m to 80-90m. We are still keen on sailing but to stay in line with the market this is no longer our core business”.

Vallicelli
Michelangelo Vallicelli

Born a sailboat designer, you are now a leading figure in the motor industry, particularly in the large yacht sector. What have you carried over from your previous experience?

“A sensitivity and attention to the formal stylistic relations that sailing boats have with their context. I call it harmony of forms. Sail and power are such different genres in terms of dimensions and propulsion solutions. When I first began with sailing boats, especially sports and racing boats, the need was for what was essential for performance. This rigour is not only in harmony with the context, it also provides a proportionality within the design itself. The transfer of formal repertoires from architecture, industrial design or cars is not always transferable to yachting.”

Vallicelli
Genesia

A practical example of formal rigour?

“Rigour is an abstract principle concerning ratios and proportions. If, stylistically, we take boats like Okto (ISA Yacht, 66.4 metres), which we designed with original forms, we see her rigour in her lines. Compared to others we designed for the large ISA Yacht series (Silver Wind – 43 metres, Infinite Jest – 75 metres) or Roe (73.6 metres, Turquoise Yachts), they may appear stylistically different, yet they all respect the ratios and relationships between the upper decks in relation to the hull. Okto’s frame embraces the stern, cuts across the decks and connects over the bow. But these belong to the more calligraphic aspects of the design. Rather than talking about what distinguishes these boats we need to look at the volumes and the relationship between the superstructure and the hull”.

Vallicelli
Pershing GTX80

The trend in recent years is for yacht design to be more and more akin to a home at sea

“The relationship between context and object is key when it comes to linguistic choices and must never be overlooked, even beyond that between the artificial and the natural. A seaside villa’s forms that cannot be transferred to a mountainside home even if both have roofs and windows. Even with geometrically abstract or rigid lines, and environmental context, Frank Lloyd Wright’s waterfall house, a twentieth-century icon, is proof that every design must refer to a history, less it have no aesthetic value. The nautical world’s context and history cannot be disregarded. Today the boundaries between the typical industrial and architectural forms have merged, as is the case in yacht interiors, so much so that some environments could be at home on a boat as in a hotel. Frankly, this recognisability is not acceptable”.

Vallicelli
wallywhy100

How do you view the presence of non-boating designers in yacht design? 

“This is a commercial phenomenon due to a globalised landscape, not a cultural one. A professional from a different sector may still add value. The multifaceted Philip Starck, for example, with whom I collaborated on an 80-foot fast cruiser, was not a specialist but made for an excellent cooperation. On exteriors there is little to transfer from the outside, but interiors lend themselves well, especially on large yachts where you can separate, I would say unacceptably, the exterior from the interior and recreate a beach house or a St. Moritz home, to give the client some reassuring international style.”

Vallicelli
Oceanco Ani

What changes between working for a shipyard or an owner? 

“Both worlds share one common element. The textbooks teach us that ‘for every great architect there is a great prince’. Nobody invents a project without a recipient. In the industry, before a brief one interacts with many individuals: a brand manager, a marketing director, maybe a sales manager, or the entrepreneur himself, a frequent occurrence given the sector’s unmatched size. With the owner, those figures are all included in the questions they ask. Experience, sensitivity and vision are key. When we refitted Genesia, a 40-metre supply vessel, into a yacht, owner Carlo Perrone asked us for an ‘industrial chic’ design. The stimulus came from the questions posed by the owner, the solution from our expertise.”

Vallicelli
K584

What is lacking for sailing to claim a spot in the market at a time when people are talking about sustainability?

“Everything is there, yet despite greater environmental awareness, nothing is happening. Sailing boats should be experiencing a commercial boom, at least in this perspective. It’s one of the great contradictions of our times: our focus on sustainability is growing in the motor segment and, as in the automotive industry, more and more yards are building hybrid-powered yachts.”

Marta Gasparini

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