Cristiano Gatto Design

A sculptor before he was a yacht designer

Gatto trained as a sculptor, earning the Maestro d'Arte qualification from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice at the age of 22, with early training that ran through welding, carpentry, stone carving, plastic moulding and glass blowing. He worked afterward in Philippe Starck's Italian studio before moving into yacht design around 2000, and founded his own studio, Cristiano Gatto Design, in 2001. He still hand-draws layouts in watercolour for clients rather than presenting only CAD renderings, on the stated reasoning that owners unused to technical drawings need to see what a space will actually feel like.

The sculptor's training shows up in how he talks about the work rather than only in how it looks: "the idea has to be linked to the process of making," he has said, describing an inability to draw something without simultaneously working out how it would be built. That is a useful instinct in a discipline where a beautiful rendering that cannot be built to weight, cost and class rules is worth nothing, and it is the same instinct that let the studio survive the 2008 financial crisis, when Gatto has said operations were forced to pause, by his own account, rather than closing outright.

What the studio actually does, and does not, do

No. The studio's core, checkable body of work is interior design, with exterior styling credited on a smaller number of projects and naval architecture always handled by a separate office such as Van Oossanen or Yankee Delta Studio. On the great majority of the Heesen deliveries that make up the bulk of Gatto's portfolio, the exterior lines are Omega Architects' work and Gatto's credit is the interior alone, sometimes stretching to exterior deck furniture, as on the 2017 Home.

This distinction matters for anyone commissioning him expecting a Nuvolari Lenard-style single-office authorship of the whole hull. What an owner buys from Cristiano Gatto Design is depth in one discipline, proven across an unusually large number of deliveries, rather than a signature exterior silhouette. The two full-scope exceptions in the record, I Nova and the Majesty 175, are the projects to look at for evidence of what he does when he is drawing the outside as well as the inside.

Cristiano Gatto has now designed the interior of more than a dozen Heesen yachts across a single decade, the kind of repeat business a stylist earns only by never giving a demanding yard a reason to look elsewhere.

A decade of near-identical hulls at one yard

At least a dozen, running from Crazy Me in 2013 through two more due for delivery in 2026, almost entirely on Heesen's 50-metre fast-displacement aluminium platform. Home, delivered in July 2017 as the world's first fast-displacement motor yacht with hybrid propulsion, was followed by Daisy D, Masa, Danica, Ela, Aquamarine, Infinity and Alp at roughly annual intervals, then Orion in 2025 and Project Sophia and the 57-metre full-custom Project Setteesettanta both scheduled for delivery by the end of 2026, the latter marking, by Heesen's own count, the twelfth collaboration between the yard and the designer.

A repeat run at this length on a semi-custom platform is a different credential to a single spectacular one-off. Heesen builds to a demanding engineering standard and does not keep recommissioning a designer who creates friction on the technical side; Gatto has described the relationship in terms of Italian creativity meeting Dutch technical precision, and said plainly that "none of the approaches are wrong, but when combined they create something even better." For an owner, the practical read is that a Gatto interior on a Heesen hull has already been proven to fit the yard's build process a dozen times over, which is not something a first-time collaboration between a yard and a designer can offer.

Ela, and the mullion as a design signature

Ela, Heesen's 49.8-metre delivered in 2021, carries an interior where the window mullions themselves, in warm Canaletto walnut trimmed with dark-tinted walnut and backed with mirror to amplify the sea view, are treated as a deliberate design feature rather than concealed structure. Gatto has said every yacht in the series gets its own new mullion concept, which is a specific, repeatable design move rather than a vague claim to originality, and it is one way an otherwise similar hull is made to feel distinct from its sisters.

The rest of the interior follows the same brief the whole run shares: floor-to-ceiling glass used for actual sightlines rather than only for photographs, rich but calm materials, and a main-deck layout that separates a dining nook from the bar and lounge so the boat reads as more than one room. It is a formula, in the neutral sense of the word, refined across a decade of near-identical hulls rather than reinvented from scratch each time, which is exactly what a repeat client commissioning hull number nine or ten is paying for.

I Nova and Ocean Victory: the two full-scope credits before Majesty 175

I Nova, a 49.75-metre expedition yacht built by the Greek yard Cosmo Explorer and delivered in 2013, and Ocean Victory, a 47.5-metre ISA Yachts motor yacht delivered in 2005, are the two projects before the Heesen run where Gatto is credited with both the interior and the exterior. I Nova won Best Interior at the 2014 ShowBoats Design Awards for a layout built around a large open-plan saloon and dining room, a skylounge, and an indoor beach club and sauna on the lower deck, styled as a boat for what the yard called "the Explorer, innovator and sea-focused owner."

Ocean Victory came earlier and mattered more personally to Gatto: he has described meeting his own professional hero, the naval architect Walter Franchini, on the strength of being handed the design of the third example of ISA's 47.5-metre series. The detail worth keeping is practical rather than sentimental: it is the first recorded instance in his own account of leather used on a yacht's floors, an early example of the material experimentation that later became a recognisable habit across his interiors.

Majesty 175: the largest hull he has taken end to end

The Majesty 175, Gulf Craft's flagship, delivered in 2021 and named Serenity M.R.F. for her owner, at 54 to 56 metres depending on the source measured, is the largest yacht where Cristiano Gatto Design holds both the interior and the exterior credit. Naval architecture was by Massimo Gregori of Yankee Delta Studio. Gatto maximised light through large windows and set a clean, minimalist palette of whites and greys, with colour carried only in the soft furnishings, and the layout runs to a dedicated gym, a five-metre infinity pool, a hybrid sky-lounge that converts to open sun deck, and a circular cinema lounge, amenity spaces that only a hull this large can afford to give a single use each.

The yacht completed sea trials in early 2021 and made her public debut at Dubai Harbour in May of that year, and the model itself was first announced at the 2016 Monaco Yacht Show, meaning the design brief and the eventual delivery were separated by roughly five years, a gap worth noting for any owner assuming a full-custom flagship moves quickly once a designer is appointed. It remains the clearest single evidence of what Gatto does with a hull large enough to give him the whole shape rather than only the rooms inside it.

Owner's representative, a role that grew out of trust rather than a title

On recent projects including Project Sophia and the 57-metre Project Setteesettanta, Gatto has taken on the formal role of owner's representative, meaning he manages budget, schedule and technical compliance on the client's behalf through the build, not only the design brief. By his own account the role grew organically out of long-term client relationships rather than being something he set out to offer, and it is a natural extension of a decade spent inside the same yard's build process closely enough to know where problems usually start.

An owner should understand what this does and does not solve. It gives a client a single trusted point of contact who already knows the yard intimately, which is genuinely valuable on a multi-year full-custom build. It does not remove the conflict of interest inherent in the same person being paid to style the interior and paid again to judge, on the owner's behalf, whether the yard has delivered that interior to standard. Independent owner's representative firms exist specifically to avoid that overlap, and an owner weighing the choice should ask, plainly, how disputes between the design brief and the build are adjudicated when the designer and the representative are the same person.

Onde: thirty years distilled into a furniture line

Onde and Onde Atelier are an exterior furniture and soft-furnishing collection Gatto launched after six years of development, three of them spent on prototyping, describing it as an attempt to combine everything learned across a thirty-year career into one series. Production runs mainly through workshops in Italy and Austria, and the brief addresses the specific demands of marine furniture: weight, volume and durability against sun and salt, without abandoning the aesthetic standard his yacht interiors are known for.

A furniture line is a common move for an established interior designer, and it is worth being plain about why: it is a lower-risk, faster-turning revenue stream than waiting years between yacht commissions, and it puts the studio's name in front of owners who are not currently building a boat. That is not a criticism so much as a fact an owner should weigh alongside the studio's design fees, since a business with a second income stream is a more stable long-term partner on a multi-year build than one depending entirely on the next yacht commission landing on time.

How a commission runs, and what it costs

Almost always through an introduction, most often from a yard's own sales broker rather than a cold approach, after which Gatto has said a design deal can be sealed within about seven weeks once an owner has met him and liked the fit. Once under way, the studio and the yard work through close collaboration with what has been described as meticulous control at each step, including personal owner involvement in choosing materials such as marble and wood, a selection process alone that can run two months on a full-custom build.

Cristiano Gatto Design does not publish a fee scale, and no studio at this level does. The market band, per the SuperYachtReview price guide updated March 2026, is 1 to 5 per cent of build cost for design plus 2 to 4 per cent for project management, both sitting outside the yard's own quoted price; where Gatto also takes the owner's representative role, an owner should expect that management fee to be structured and paid separately from the design fee itself, and should ask for the two to be broken out on any proposal rather than presented as one number.

Recognition, and the concentration risk that comes with it

A dozen-plus deliveries with a single builder is a genuine credential, but it is also a concentration that has not yet been tested by a serious downturn at that one yard, and Heesen's own commercial fortunes are, to a real degree, now bound up with this designer's continued involvement. Awards recognition backs the work up: I Nova's Best Interior at the 2014 ShowBoats Design Awards is the clearest juried result, alongside consistent trade coverage of nearly every Heesen delivery he has touched since. The studio itself has been open that the 2008 financial crisis forced a pause in operations, which is useful honesty rather than a reason for alarm, but it is a reminder that a design studio's fortunes track the broader market more closely than owners sometimes assume.

The studio suits an owner or a yard that wants proven, repeatable interior competence on a semi-custom or full-custom motor yacht build, ideally one already working with Heesen or a similarly demanding aluminium-hull yard. It suits less well an owner who specifically wants a single, signature exterior silhouette from one office, since the two clearest examples of Gatto doing the whole hull, I Nova and the Majesty 175, are separated by eight years and by two very different kinds of yard.

What is not published, and what a buyer should ask for directly

No fee scale, no standard contract terms, and no public account of how the studio structures its dual role as designer and owner's representative when the two roles might disagree with each other on a live build. This research also found no independently attributable owner testimony describing the commissioning experience from the client's side; the public record is trade press interviews with Gatto himself, Heesen's own project announcements, and awards-panel citations.

A prospective client, particularly one considering the owner's representative arrangement on a full-custom build, should ask in writing how a dispute between the design brief and the build schedule is resolved when Gatto is being paid to represent the owner's interests on the same project where his own design is being judged. That is not evidence of any actual conflict having occurred; it is simply a structural question worth a clear answer before signing, in the same way an owner would ask it of any single firm wearing two hats on the same job.

A chi si rivolge: An owner or a yard commissioning a fast-displacement or full-custom motor yacht who wants an interior specialist with an unusually long, checkable run of deliveries at one demanding builder, more than an owner looking for a single dramatic exterior statement.