Sorgiovanni Designs

Fremantle to Monte Carlo

Sam Sorgiovanni trained in industrial design in Western Australia and joined the Fremantle shipbuilder Oceanfast, where he worked for around eleven to twelve years, rising from junior designer to chief designer under the direction of Jon Bannenberg, the London-based yacht designer widely credited with founding the profession as it is practised today. Sorgiovanni has called Bannenberg a true genius and named him as the designer he admires most.

He opened his own studio, Sorgiovanni Designs, in Fremantle in 1997, and later added an office in Monaco to serve European clients close to the yards that build the largest hulls. The Fremantle office still leads the practice today, an unusual arrangement for a studio whose yachts are built almost entirely in Europe and Australia; most direct rivals are based in Monaco, London or Amsterdam.

What the studio actually sells

Sorgiovanni Designs sells exterior styling and, on most of its best-known projects, interior design as well, taking a yacht from profile and general arrangement through to fabric, furniture and material selection. Nirvana, Barbara, White Rabbit and Ruya all carry both the exterior and interior credit to Sorgiovanni.

That is not universal. On Secret, the 82.3 metre Abeking and Rasmussen yacht delivered in 2013, Sorgiovanni drew the exterior and the interior went to Jim Harris; on Hey Jude, the 44.1 metre Alloy Yachts delivery of 2015, his exterior carries an interior by Redman Whiteley Dixon; and on Jubilee, the 110 metre Oceanco flagship of 2017, he did the interior while the exterior profile was by Igor Lobanov. An owner can buy the full package or just the shape, and the studio has done both often enough that neither is the exception.

Jubilee is the one hull in this portfolio where Sorgiovanni has held the interior credit on the original build and the exterior credit on the refit, on two programmes years apart, for two different owners.

What a Sorgiovanni yacht looks like

The house style favours a resolved, uncluttered profile with long glazed bands, restrained exterior styling lines and an emphasis on usable deck and beach-club space over ornament. Sorgiovanni has described his own turning point as Anastasia, the 75.5 metre Oceanco delivered in 2008, saying it was the yacht where he established his own style on both the exterior and the interior.

The years under Bannenberg still show in a preference for clean, geometric superstructure massing over the more sculptural, curved forms some contemporaries favour. Where the studio departs furthest from a conventional profile is White Rabbit, the 84 metre trimaran Echo Yachts delivered in 2018, where Sorgiovanni's exterior had to resolve a three-hulled platform rather than a monohull, and the result reads as sharply angular rather than resolved and soft.

The breakthrough projects

Sorgiovanni's first full exterior-and-interior commission under his own studio was Aussie Rules, an expedition-style yacht built by Oceanfast, the yard where he had trained, for the golfer Greg Norman; his own account credits it as the project that proved the young studio could carry a full brief alone. A commission for the interior of Excellence II, a 47.5 metre Feadship, followed soon after and was his first job for a European yard.

Anastasia came in 2008 and, by Sorgiovanni's own account in a BOAT International interview, remains the yacht where he established his own style and holds a special place for him personally. It set the template the studio has repeated since: a full exterior and interior brief for an owner willing to build custom rather than buy a series hull.

Two Oceanco flagships, one exception

Nirvana, delivered by Oceanco in April 2012 at 88.5 metres, and Barbara, delivered by the same yard in 2017 at 88.5 metres, are the two largest yachts on which Sorgiovanni holds both the exterior and interior credit outright. Nirvana became known for two reptile vivariums built into the accommodation and around 180 different materials used through the interior; Barbara went on to a Best Exterior Styling finalist nomination and a Best Interior Design special commendation at the Boat International Design and Innovation Awards 2018.

Jubilee, the largest yacht Sorgiovanni has worked on at 110 metres, complicates the pattern. Oceanco delivered her in 2017 with an exterior by Igor Lobanov and an interior, accommodating 30 guests in 15 cabins, by Sorgiovanni alone. At that size the naval architecture and general arrangement are usually settled before an interior designer is appointed, so the credit split on Jubilee is closer to how the trade normally works than the fuller briefs on Nirvana and Barbara.

Outside the usual bracket: a trimaran and an award winner

White Rabbit is the clearest outlier in the portfolio: an 84 metre aluminium trimaran, the largest tri-hulled yacht in the world when Echo Yachts delivered her from Western Australia in October 2018, with naval architecture by One2Three and the exterior and interior by Sorgiovanni. She won the Best Naval Architecture award at the 2019 Boat International Design and Innovation Awards.

Ruya, a 41 metre, 499 GT Alia Yachts delivery of 2016 with naval architecture by Van Oossanen, is smaller but arguably more decorated: she won a Neptune at the World Superyacht Awards in the Displacement Motor Yacht Below 500 GT category and a ShowBoats Design Award for her Australian-outback-inspired interior, both credited to Sorgiovanni. Between them the two yachts show the studio working confidently outside the conventional 60 to 100 metre steel-hull bracket that dominates the rest of its portfolio.

Working alongside a second interior house

Secret and Hey Jude show how the studio operates when an owner wants the exterior from Sorgiovanni but a different eye on the interior. On Secret, the 82.3 metre Abeking and Rasmussen yacht delivered in 2013, Sorgiovanni's exterior wraps an interior by Jim Harris built around a colour-driven, theatrical brief; on Hey Jude, the 44.1 metre Alloy Yachts delivery of 2015, his exterior carries an interior by Redman Whiteley Dixon.

For an owner this is a normal way to buy a yacht at this size, and it means Sorgiovanni's exterior has to work as a shell a second designer will finish rather than as one half of a single authored vision. It also means the studio's public portfolio, which does not always separate exterior credit from interior credit, has to be read yacht by yacht rather than assumed.

One hull, two names

Jubilee was not finished with Sorgiovanni's involvement after her 2017 delivery. Sold in 2018, she returned to Lurssen's Hamburg yard in 2019 for what the yard has described as one of its largest refits, was renamed Kaos, and re-emerged with around 1,500 square metres of interior space renewed. This time Sorgiovanni restyled the exterior, and the new interior went to Reymond Langton.

That makes Jubilee, now Kaos, the one hull in this portfolio where Sorgiovanni has held the interior credit on the original build and the exterior credit on the refit, on two separate programmes years apart. It is a useful data point for an owner weighing a major refit rather than a new build: the studio takes on requalifying an existing hull, not only new-build commissions, and is comfortable working to a brief a different owner and a different yard set years before.

What the commission costs, and the point of no return

Sorgiovanni Designs, like almost every studio in this class, does not publish a fee scale. The one independent industry-wide figure available is SuperYachtReview's 2026 price guide, which puts a designer's fee at 1 to 5 per cent of build cost and project management at a further 2 to 4 per cent, both outside the price a yard quotes; on a 60 to 90 metre custom build costed at EUR 60 million to EUR 150 million, that band works out to roughly EUR 1 million to EUR 7.5 million for design alone.

What is published is the shape of the work rather than its price: exterior and general arrangement first, then a fuller interior brief once an owner has committed, run alongside a yard's own engineering once a building contract is signed. Nothing on the studio's own site or in the trade press sets out payment stages, a cancellation policy or a day rate for construction supervision, which is normal for a practice of this size and means an owner has to negotiate those terms rather than assume an industry default.

Who owns the drawings, and what the name is worth at resale

No public source sets out Sorgiovanni Designs' copyright terms specifically. Absent a published departure from it, the professional default described in the ITIC standard trading conditions for naval architects applies: the studio keeps the intellectual property and the client receives a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to build the one hull under contract, with anything beyond that, a sister ship or a heavy refit reusing the drawings, requiring a separate agreement.

At resale, a Sorgiovanni credit is a genuine asset on the yachts built by the established yards in this portfolio, Oceanco, Abeking and Rasmussen, Alia Yachts and Alloy Yachts, because each has a brokerage track record and known comparables. It is a thinner asset on a one-off like White Rabbit, where the trimaran platform has no sister ships to compare against and a future buyer is really pricing the yard's engineering as much as the design.

A chi si rivolge: Owners commissioning a 40 to 90 metre custom yacht who want a full exterior-and-interior brief handled by one Australian-trained studio, or an exterior alone alongside a separately appointed interior house.