Vallicelli Design

Rome, Sailing, and a National Yacht

Vallicelli began designing yachts in 1974 while still studying architecture in Rome, and in 1976 he opened his own practice there under the name that still stands, A. Vallicelli and C. Inside a decade the studio had around 150 racing and cruising sailboats built to its drawings, starting with the Half Tonner Ziggurat 916 in 1976 and running through Filo da Torcere, winner of the One Ton Cup, in 1980 and the Brava series of IOR racers in 1981 and 1984. That volume, in a single decade, is what built the reputation the later motor yacht work rests on.

Azzurra turned that reputation national. The 12 Metre was launched at Pesaro on 19 July 1982 for a Yacht Club Costa Smeralda syndicate backed by the Aga Khan and Gianni Agnelli, and in 1983 she became the first Italian yacht ever entered in an America's Cup challenger series, finishing third in the Louis Vuitton Cup with 24 wins from 49 races. Vallicelli drew Italy's next challenger for the 1987 Cup in Perth. He also holds what is described as Italy's first university chair in industrial design for the nautical sector, and is a full professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Pescara and a lecturer on the Yacht Design Master at Milan Polytechnic.

What the Studio Actually Sells

Today the practice is co-led by Vallicelli and the engineer Alessandro Nazareth, who has sat on the Offshore Racing Congress since 1995 and chaired its International Technical Committee since 2006, writing the racing rules used at superyacht regattas including the New York Yacht Club's races and the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta. SuperYacht Times, reporting on the studio on 11 April 2025, put the portfolio at more than 170 projects and quoted the studio's own line on its aim: to transfer to motor boats all the feel and effortless lifestyle of sailing yachts.

What that means in a contract varies by job. On CRN's N Joy, ISA's Silver Wind and Okto, and Turquoise's Roe and Infinite Jest, Vallicelli drew the exterior only and the naval architecture stayed with the yard. On the Pershing GTX80, a Ferretti Group production model, the studio did both the exterior and the interior. On Genesia, a stalled commercial hull turned into a private yacht, it ran the naval architecture, the general arrangement and the interior brief itself. On Wally's wallywhy200 the relationship reversed again: the exterior is Wally's own, credited to Luca Bassani Design, and Vallicelli supplied the interior. A buyer needs to ask which of those four services is actually on offer before assuming the others come with it.

Vallicelli described the hull of Genesia, before conversion, as looking like a monumental sculpture by Richard Serra. Two years later it won a World Superyacht Award.

What a Vallicelli Yacht Looks Like

Vallicelli has said every design must refer to a history or it has no aesthetic value, and has criticised the trend of treating motor yachts as floating hotels disconnected from any nautical context. On Okto that reads as a dark hull under a silver superstructure that press coverage at delivery called fierce. On the Pershing GTX80 it is a near-vertical bow and a continuous, slightly convex sheerline carried under an arch-shaped deckhouse and a carbon hardtop, refined with Ferretti's own Product Strategy Committee, led by Piero Ferrari, and its engineering department in what the yard described as an in-depth study of proportion between hull and superstructure.

On the two Turquoise-built explorers, Roe and Infinite Jest, the brief was closer to power and range than styling alone: press material from the yard describes a powerful, dynamic look balanced against curved lines for contrast between soft and rigid elements, over steel hulls and aluminium superstructures built for long ocean passages rather than marina display.

The ISA Years

Silver Wind was built in steel and aluminium at ISA's Ancona yard and delivered in 2014 with an interior by Nuvolari and Lenard. Okto followed at 66.4 metres, launched in 2014 and delivered to her owner in 2015, with an interior by the late Alberto Pinto and twin Caterpillar 3512C engines giving a top speed of 18.5 knots. She carries 12 guests and 17 crew.

What is unusual is how the yacht is still spoken about. Her captain, Aydan Longmore, told BOAT International the layout is very inclusive for whoever is on board, with guest preferences relayed to the crew immediately and most systems automated to one button once you have been shown how. Camper and Nicholsons broker Bobby Bigio put it more bluntly: the exterior has made it hard not to draw eyes, more than ten years after Vallicelli drew her profile.

Turquoise, and Two of the Studio's Biggest Deliveries

Roe, built under the yard number NB66 and originally carrying the project name Vallicelli, has a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, an interior by Ken Freivokh, and a stated range of 7,000 nautical miles at 12 knots for 14 guests across seven cabins with 17 crew. Naval architecture stayed with Turquoise itself.

Infinite Jest is fractionally larger at 75 metres, with an interior by Julie Hillman Design working alongside the interior architecture house Sinot. She is also the most travelled: her captain, Tim Davison, logged the crossing to Antarctica in December 2023, writing that air and water temperatures dropped to freezing within 24 hours of leaving South America and that the voyage was the product of nearly three years of planning. An exterior drawn for range and ice-adjacent work, not marina looks, is doing exactly that job.

CRN, the Ferretti Group, and a Myth to Correct

CRN's N Joy, a 72 metre full-custom launched in March 2023 and delivered privately that December, has a Vallicelli exterior over naval architecture and engineering held by CRN's own technical office, with an interior by Nuvolari Lenard. She is 1,880 GT with a 12.4 metre beam, carrying 12 guests and 19 crew. This research found no evidence connecting Vallicelli to Custom Line, whose current models are drawn by other named studios, so a buyer should not assume the whole Ferretti Group is Vallicelli's territory.

The relationship with CRN continues: the yard's planned flagship, an 86 metre known publicly as M/Y 144, has its naval architecture developed by the Ferretti Group's own Superyachts engineering division and its exterior by Vallicelli Design, on a steel hull and aluminium superstructure of 2,700 GT with a 13.5 metre beam, built to Lloyd's Register class. She was still in build and unnamed in public reporting at the time of writing, expected to launch in 2026, so she counts as current work, not a delivered reference.

Genesia, and the Conversion Work

The hull began life around 2005 as an Ievoli-class offshore supply vessel, left unfinished at the Cantieri Navali Termoli yard in southern Italy. Work resumed around 2013 and Cantieri Navali Chioggia, near Venice, spent roughly two years turning it into a private yacht, delivered in 2017. Vallicelli's studio modified the bow with a bulb for efficiency and seakindliness, reworked the stern into a yacht-style transom and bathing platform, moved the engine room bulkhead six metres to free up guest accommodation, and rebuilt the bridge, working in 3D alongside CNC's own engineering team on piping, shafts and interior layout.

Vallicelli described the vessel before conversion as looking like a monumental sculpture by Richard Serra. The brief came from owner Carlo Perrone, who asked for industrial chic, and Nazareth has described the resulting interior as not minimalist but deliberately free of marble, ornate steelwork or crystal. The project's win at the World Superyacht Awards is the clearest independent recognition this research found for the studio's non-styling work.

The Racing Legacy and the Production Side

The racing side never closed. Vallicelli's site still names sail design for racing and cruising yachts among its services, a direct line back to Azzurra and the 1987 Perth challenger, and Nazareth's chairmanship of the ORC's international technical committee keeps the studio inside the rulemaking for the regattas where superyachts race today.

On the production side, the Pershing GTX80 is 23.98 metres overall, launched at the port of Fano in April 2024 after the range's flagship GTX116 opened the line in 2023, and carries three Volvo Penta IPS pod drives to a top speed of about 34 knots. Ferretti Group credits Vallicelli with both the exterior and interior on this model, worked out with the group's Product Strategy Committee and Engineering Department, making it the clearest example in this portfolio of the studio taking a full inside-and-out brief rather than styling handed off to a separate interior house.

What the Commission Costs, and the Point of No Return

Every delivered project traced in this research ran the same general shape: an exterior or naval-architecture brief agreed with the studio, developed through concept and general arrangement, then handed to the yard's own engineering office as contract design for construction. No studio-specific fee has been published for any Vallicelli commission. The one general market figure available is the SuperYachtReview 2026 price guide, updated March 2026, which puts a naval architecture or exterior design fee at 1 to 5 per cent of build cost plus a further 2 to 4 per cent for project management, both outside the price a yard itself quotes. That is a market-wide band, not a number specific to this studio, and should be read as context rather than a quote.

The point of no return is not the design agreement but the yard's build contract. Once CRN, ISA or Turquoise has begun engineering hull steel to Vallicelli's exterior lines, changing designer means re-paying for the same hull form. On drawing ownership, the default under the ITIC standard trading conditions for naval architects, dated 8 July 2025, is that the consultant keeps the intellectual property and the client receives only a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use it for that one agreement. An owner planning a sister ship or a heavy refit should ask for the word exclusive in that licence and for the drawing set in native format, not a PDF.

Where This Studio Sits, and Who It Suits

Scale is the honest limit. Infinite Jest at 75 metres is the biggest hull this research could confirm as delivered; the 86 metre CRN M/Y 144 would overtake her but was still under construction, unnamed in public reporting, at the time of writing. This research found no delivered project with Lurssen, Feadship or Oceanco, the three yards that build most of the yachts over 100 metres afloat, which is a genuine gap against the studios that specialise at that end of the market. The studio's own count of more than 170 projects also spans five decades of raceboats and smaller series production hulls, so the number of superyacht-scale commissions with independent press coverage is closer to a few dozen than to 170.

Against that, the range on show is real: a 2014 production-scale motor yacht, a 2017 conversion of a stalled commercial hull that won an industry award, two Turquoise-built explorers capable of an Antarctic passage, a current Ferretti Group flagship in build, and a still-active production line with Pershing. No resale data specific to a Vallicelli yacht turned up in this research, and none of the deliveries here is old enough yet to have gone through a full ownership cycle. The studio suits an owner who wants an Italian office with genuine naval-architecture capability, not styling alone, is building in the 40 to 90 metre range or buying a Pershing GTX80, and is prepared, on most jobs, to bring in a separate interior house alongside it.

Para quién es: Owners commissioning a 40 to 90 metre custom or explorer-range yacht who want an Italian studio with real naval-architecture capability, not styling alone, and are content to pair it with a separate interior house on most projects, or a production buyer choosing the Pershing GTX80.