Team for Design

How Team for Design started

Gobbi grew up in Venice, and by his own account his interest in the water came from his native lagoon city and from a father who kept boats. He studied architecture at IUAV, the Venice university, and his thesis project was a luxury ship designed to carry 100 passengers, the point at which his interest turned specifically toward yacht design rather than buildings. He then went abroad to specialize further, studying yacht design in California, before returning to Italy to work at Nuvolari and Lenard, one of the more established Italian yacht design houses, where he built up practical experience on real commissions before deciding to work under his own name.

He founded Team for Design in 2005, based in Mestre on the Venice mainland, and Barche Magazine has described the resulting studio as operating like a small Renaissance atelier rather than a conventional design firm. Carlo Lionetti, whose own background includes a thesis on converting a Venetian ferry and a history in pleasure boat design, joined as co-director and is described in profiles as Gobbi's right hand and day to day coordinator. Two decades on, the studio's client list has grown from early independent commissions into a long running relationship with Rossinavi and, more recently, work for Baglietto, ISA Yachts and Turquoise Yachts.

What Team for Design actually does

The studio's stated scope covers conceptual exterior and interior design, development of the general arrangement, and executive design detailing, followed by project management during the build itself. It does not run its own naval architecture or structural engineering department. On the 70m Polaris, for example, the hull and naval architecture were handled separately by Giuseppe Arrabito of Arrabito Naval Architects while Gobbi's studio owned the exterior styling and interior design, a division of labor that recurs across most of Team for Design's Rossinavi projects. Gobbi has said in interview that a good designer starts from a hand drawn sketch, and that creativity is expressed there before any software or 3D model gets involved, which the studio treats as a working principle rather than a slogan.

Internally the studio is capped at 10 people, a limit Gobbi has said is deliberate because quality is hard to hold once a studio grows past a small group of architects and designers. Carlo Lionetti coordinates the team day to day. Alongside the yacht work, Team for Design later opened a smaller Residential Department that applies the same design language to villas, lofts and other prestige residential interiors, though yacht projects remain roughly four fifths of the studio's output by Gobbi's own estimate given to Barche Magazine.

Team for Design has built its name less on a single signature look than on a working method: sketch first, argue with the owner second, and let a yard as exacting as Rossinavi build it exactly as drawn.

The yachts Team for Design has actually delivered

The Rossinavi relationship is the backbone of the studio's output: Vellmari and Param Jamuna IV both delivered in 2013, Parillion in 2014, a smaller N2H in 2017 alongside Endeavour 2 the same year, Flying Dagger in 2018 alongside the fast displacement Utopia IV, EIV in 2020, Piacere and the 70.2m explorer flagship Polaris, later sold and renamed Polestar, both in 2021. No Stress and the interior only Lasata followed in 2023, then Bel1 in 2024. Gobbi also styled Rossinavi's 66m Alchemy, working alongside Vitruvius Yachts naval architect Philippe Briand on a yacht that Boat International and other outlets reported as the 2024 World Superyacht Awards Motor Yacht of the Year.

Outside Rossinavi, Team for Design designed the interior of Baglietto's 52.3m Akula, delivered in 2024, on a hull with exterior lines by Francesco Paszkowski Design; Baglietto's T52 series, of which Akula is part, won a 2024 World Superyacht Award for displacement motor yachts. The studio's earliest documented project on record is the much smaller 29.1m Lady Mura for Dominator in 2010, evidence that Gobbi's practice did not start at the top end of the market. Current and upcoming work spans ISA Yachts, with the 65.5m S5 delivered in 2021 and further projects including the 45m Aria SF and 44.3m I Am already delivered. A 76.25m Turquoise Yachts project is due around 2026.

How a Team for Design commission actually works

Neither Team for Design nor its principal yard partners publish what an owner pays specifically for exterior or interior styling. Industry rate guides, including one published by the naval architecture firm Kasten Marine Design, describe a fixed commission design fee of roughly 10 to 12 percent of as built cost as typical for a turnkey custom yacht, though that figure spans naval architecture, structural engineering and interior planning together rather than isolating a styling only contribution such as Team for Design's. In practice a Team for Design fee would be negotiated as part of the wider contract between owner, yard and design studio, and would vary with the split of exterior, interior and project management work assigned to the studio on any given yacht.

What is documented is how involved owners tend to be in the process itself. On Alchemy, reporting on the delivery described the American owner shaping the brief over Zoom calls through the build, and Gobbi has described the interior brief on that yacht as a request for a relaxed, elegant lounge style rather than a fixed set of specifications. That pattern, an owner engaged through the sketch and revision stage rather than handed a finished concept, is consistent with Gobbi's own description of starting every project from a hand drawn sketch that then gets argued over and refined with the client before any 3D model is built.

What sets Team for Design apart

Team for Design is small by the standards of the yards it works for. Rossinavi and Baglietto both commission naval architecture, engineering and classification work from separate specialist firms, and Team for Design's role is narrowly the styling and general arrangement brief, a structure that lets a 10 person studio sit on the credit line of 60 to 70 meter yachts without having to scale its own headcount. Compared with a multi disciplinary house such as Vitruvius Yachts, which supplied the naval architecture on Alchemy alongside Gobbi's styling, Team for Design looks less like a full service design and engineering group and more like a dedicated styling atelier that plugs into whichever technical team the yard has already assembled.

Across the portfolio a handful of details recur: continuous main deck glazing that removes visible window mullions, a distinctive bow notch some coverage has called a scuretto detail, and long LED lines that follow the contours of the hull rather than sitting as fixtures on top of it. Gobbi has said his design references run to 20th century architecture and to car design, citing Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe on proportion and comparing yacht styling to automotive design because both are exercises in shaping a dynamic object. Away from yachts, the studio has more recently taken on marble sculpture work with Venetian craftsmen, a departure Gobbi has described in interview rather than a formal new business line.

Where Team for Design's model has real limits

An owner hiring Team for Design is buying styling, general arrangement and construction supervision, not a one stop engineering house. Hull form, structural calculation and classification compliance on a yacht like Polaris were contracted separately to Arrabito Naval Architects, so a client still needs the yard to assemble, or already have in place, a naval architecture partner alongside Gobbi's studio. That is common practice in yacht design generally, but it means Team for Design cannot be treated as a single point of technical responsibility the way a full service naval architecture and design group can.

The studio's small size, 10 people including Gobbi, is a stated point of pride but it is also a constraint: at any one time the studio can only carry a limited number of full custom commissions through concept, executive design and build supervision, which likely explains why deliveries at any one yard tend to be spaced years apart rather than overlapping. Gobbi has also spoken candidly, in an interview with Top Yacht Design, about the risk that recurring signature elements such as the studio's simplified glazing and bow details could make sister projects for different owners look too similar to each other, a tension he says he manages case by case rather than having fully solved.

Where Team for Design is headed next

Beyond the Rossinavi and Baglietto yachts already delivered, Team for Design's current pipeline includes several ISA Yachts projects, among them the 67m Sea Raider X and the 64.8m Classic 65 both slated around 2026 to 2028, along with a 68m Granturismo model and a smaller 44m Unica steel model on a similar timeline. A separate 76.25m project with Turquoise Yachts is due around 2026. That extends the studio's reach into a yard it had not previously worked with, alongside ongoing Rossinavi relationships that have run continuously since 2013.

None of this changes the studio's basic shape: a 10 person Venice atelier taking on a handful of full custom superyacht commissions at a time rather than scaling into a larger multi studio group. The parallel move into marble sculpture with Venetian craftsmen, and the earlier opening of a Residential Department for villas and interiors, both point to Gobbi diversifying his own creative output around the edges of the yacht business rather than changing how the core studio is run.

لمين هو: An owner who wants exterior and interior design handled as one brief by a small, hands-on Venetian team rather than split between separate exterior and interior houses, especially one building at a yard, Rossinavi or Baglietto among them, that Team for Design already knows well.