Nauta Design

A Shipyard That Became a Design Studio

Mario Pedol, Massimo Gino and Enzo Moiso founded Nauta in Milan in 1985. Pedol's own background gives the studio's naval leanings some context: his grandfather was a chief engineer on ocean liners, and Pedol designed his first boat, a seven metre Mini Tonner called the Avventura 703, while he was still in college.

The studio's first joint design, the Nauta 54, launched at the Genoa Boat Show in 1986, at which point Nauta was still building its own boats rather than only drawing them for other yards. Italy's economic downturn in the early 1990s made that shipyard model unsustainable, and the founders pivoted to design and brokerage, the shape the business has kept since.

A Small, Open Studio Milan

The studio operates from Corso Sempione in Milan as an open design space of 25 professionals, 20 of them dedicated designers, under Pedol as president and Gino as chief executive, with Martino Majno and Guido Valtorta named as other directors in recent trade coverage.

That is a modest headcount to have produced both the largest privately owned yacht in the world at delivery, Azzam, and a run of Southern Wind sailing yachts a quarter of her length, and it suggests a studio built around a small number of senior designers moving between very different scales of project rather than large specialised teams for each.

Mario Pedol was not sure why one jump from 145 to 180 metres was not a simple stretching process. Azzam was the answer, and for over a decade nothing built afterward was longer.

Azzam, and a Jump Nobody Was Sure About

Azzam was delivered by Lurssen in 2013 at 180.61 metres, and held the title of the world's longest private yacht for over a decade. Nauta did the exterior styling only: the interior went to French designer Christophe Leoni, working to a turn-of-the-century Empire-style brief, and naval architecture and engineering were led by Lurssen's own team together with the owner's representative.

Pedol has described the scale increase candidly: it was one jump to 180 metres, and he was not sure why, because it was not a simple stretching process and the design effectively had to be redone. He has also called it the most demanding work of the studio's career, defined by the strictest and most challenging requirements in terms of dimensions, performance and technology his team had faced.

Zen and Dragonfly, Interiors Inside Someone Else's Exterior

On Zen, delivered by Feadship in 2021, Nauta's credit is interior only, shared with FM Architettura; the exterior was by De Voogt, Feadship's in-house naval architecture and design arm. Trade press is not fully consistent here: at least one Boat International showcase page credits Nauta with Zen's exterior as well, which conflicts with the same publication's own yacht-directory listing. That inconsistency in the record itself is worth flagging to anyone citing a single source as settled fact.

On Dragonfly, delivered by Lurssen in 2024 at 142.08 metres, Nauta's credit covers the interior and the design of the exterior social areas, while overall exterior styling is credited to German Frers and naval architecture to Lurssen's in-house team. Both projects show the same pattern as Azzam: on the studio's three most publicised large new-builds of the last fifteen years, Nauta has held only part of the design brief each time, never the whole of it.

Nilaya, and a Real Materials Trade-Off

Nilaya, delivered by Royal Huisman in 2023, is one of the few large recent projects where Nauta held the full exterior and interior brief, working alongside naval architects Reichel/Pugh. Pedol has explained the central material choice directly: carbon fibre would have been lighter and generally faster, but aluminium is more comfortable and more impact resistant, and the team set a target weight with Reichel/Pugh without sacrificing the design to reach it.

Massimo Gino has described the owner as a quality maniac whose insistence on saving weight while keeping comfort and quality was, in his account, a genuinely good problem for the project to solve. Nigel Ingram, the owner's project manager, said after sea trials that the acceleration was exciting for a yacht of that size and credited the builder's effort toward a light, stiff structure. Pedol's own verdict after trials, in his own words: not good, superb.

The Sailing Yacht Work, From Southern Wind to Perini Navi

Thalima (Southern Wind SW110, 33.6m, 2010), Black Lion (Perini Navi, 30.65m, 2012), Aragon (Southern Wind, 28.64m, 2013), Farfalla (Southern Wind, 31.78m, 2014) and the more recent Kiboko 4 (Southern Wind SW108, 2024/25) form the backbone of the studio's sailing yacht output, working with naval architects including Farr Yacht Design on the newest of them.

Andrea Micheli, Southern Wind's chief commercial officer, offered a broader observation on styling trends that bears on this end of the studio's work: wide is nice, he said, but over-wide is dangerous, because it looks beautiful in pictures but is not beautiful on the water. That is a builder executive naming a real, current tension in sailing yacht styling generally, not a complaint about a specific Nauta hull, but it is a useful caution for any buyer drawn to a wide, photogenic profile over one proven at sea.

A Refit, and a Concept That Still Awaits a Keel

Caoz 14, originally named Selene and later Parsifal IV, is a 56 metre Perini Navi from 2007 whose interior Nauta refitted at MMC Allestimenti in Genoa around 2024. The unnamed owner told Boat International the brief was to update the interiors to feel modern and warm, airy and welcoming; Pedol said afterward that the owners were very happy with the result.

Thunderball, a 70 metre motor yacht for CRN developed with naval architects Vripack, was described in 2025 coverage as under construction, meaning it should not be treated as a delivered reference project yet. An earlier concept, Project Light, an 80 to 90 metre study, is cited by the studio itself as the design thinking that informed Azzam, underlining how much of Nauta's largest work traces back to speculative studies rather than a commissioned brief from day one.

What a Commission Costs

No source, including direct interviews with Pedol conducted around the Azzam anniversary and the studio's 40th year, discloses what Nauta actually charges a client. This absence was checked specifically and found consistent across every source available.

General, non-Nauta-specific industry guides put a fixed-commission design fee at roughly 10 to 12 per cent of as-built cost for full-service work at a professional yard, with total design contribution sometimes cited as high as 25 to 30 per cent of build cost on the most highly customised projects. These figures come from small-craft and production-boat design-cost guides rather than superyacht-specific sources, and should be read as general market context only.

Azzam's Other Legacy

Azzam, Nauta's most famous single design, has become a recurring reference point in public criticism of megayacht fuel consumption and emissions, with reporting citing a burn rate of around 13 tonnes of fuel an hour, translating to a very high hourly running cost at sea. That criticism is aimed at what owning and running a yacht of her size means, not at any specific choice Nauta made in styling her.

It is nonetheless a real, published association attached to the studio's best-known work, and worth a reader knowing going in: commissioning at this scale carries a public-attention cost that has nothing to do with design quality and everything to do with size.

Who Should Commission This Studio

Nilaya and the Southern Wind sailing fleet show what a complete Nauta brief looks like: full exterior and interior authorship, working closely with a chosen naval architect, at a scale where the studio has delivered repeatedly and where owner and crew feedback, where it exists, is positive and specific rather than generic.

An owner drawn to the studio purely on the strength of Azzam, Zen or Dragonfly should understand precisely what was Nauta's on each: exterior only on Azzam, interior only on Zen, interior and social areas only on Dragonfly. That is not a reason to avoid the studio, since interior-only work at that scale is still a serious commission, but it is a reason to ask exactly what is being bought before assuming the whole aesthetic outcome of a flagship new-build comes from one office.

A chi si rivolge: Owners planning a full-custom sailing yacht in the 30 to 50 metre range, or owners who specifically want Nauta's interior work inside a larger, multi-firm new-build.