Design Showcase: New Age Italian Design
David Morris
10/01/2006

A decade ago the demarcation between Italian and American yacht interiors went much deeper than high-gloss surfaces and sleek bull noses. Now, the globalization of the affluent individual and new perceptions of good taste and practicality are creating a hybrid international style, one that Italian designers embrace with regional nuances.

Among Italy’s new-wave independent design firms are Rome-based Lazzarini Pickering Architetti, noted for its provocative Wally motor yachts and Swan sailboats; Venice’s Nuvolari-Lenard Naval Design, which plays in both the mini- and gigayacht arenas; and Fulvio De Simoni’s Ital Projects, focusing on the upper end of the semi-custom segment.

Photograph courtesy of Fulvio de Simoni/Ital Projects.(Click image to enlarge)

Claudio Lazzarini and Carl Pickering are leading-edge practitioners with projects from Paris to Bondi Beach. Emblematic of the new global synergy, Australian-born Pickering says the inherent diversity between himself and his Roman partner contributes to their innovation.

The Pershing 115’s interiors showcase the cutting-edge thinking of Fulvio De Simoni, who blurs the distinction between shapes to create elegance. Photograph courtesy of Fulvio de Simoni/Ital Projects. (Click image to enlarge)

"Our work is about pushing boundaries," says Pickering. "We look at what we’ve done, then take a fresh approach." Their current professional interest is to "reinterpret how one can live aboard a boat." Pickering believes design solutions need to transcend notions of style for style’s sake to be in sync with the individual realities of client preference and each boat’s unique environment.

"When we designed Roma for the Rolex Challenge, we understood that it’s useless to try to make a cruising yacht fast, so we tried to make a racing yacht luxurious." The firm advocates a holistic process that makes styling the logical result of analyzing function and aesthetics. "WallyPower sums up our approach. There’s no ‘interior’ or ‘exterior’—it’s really a series of intersecting planes," says Pickering.

Lazzarini and Pickeringcreated a Zen-like retreat on Benetti’s Sai Ram by blending Indian and Asian influences with mod Italian furnishings. (Click images to enlarge)

"It’s an interesting moment in the boating industry. Five years ago in-house designers were offering clients what they thought rich people wanted, rather than good design," says Pickering, who is never at a loss for the provocative. "[Builders] are now realizing they lost precious time—perhaps five or ten years—resisting modernization of nautical design.

"Italy has had to go back to doing what [it does] best, which is good design; which is not gold taps and over-the-top marble and over-polished wood. It’s about contemporary design and knowing how to live," asserts Pickering. "It’s about understanding space and the details of designing not only for what needs to be seen but also [for] what needs to remain hidden. That’s an enormous change."Lazzarini and Pickering favor sensuous combinations of natural and high-tech materials like cherry wood, saddle leather and carbon fiber—materials that allow physical as well as visual lightness. That said, their firm is now tackling its first entirely wood interior, tempering a modernist approach to be "very warm and cozy at the same time." Another assignment involves a spectacular all-glass helicopter garage. "The client’s toys have become the central idea of the project, and he likes to see his toys, so we’ve made an aquarium for them."

Nuvolari-Lenard has earned international renown in the design and construction of high-end production and custom yachts. Founded by Carlo Nuvolari and Dan Lenard, the firm operates from a gleaming new studio that appears to float on an artificial pond in Scorzè, outside Venice. With a client list that includes Carver, CRN, Palmer Johnson and oceAnco, the firm’s pedigree is substantial.

"The tendency toward the gigantic continues: We are designing boats that five or ten years ago were unthinkable," notes Nuvolari. He views this growth spurt as a tectonic shift. "The yacht remains an object of distinction, but the means by which one distinguishes oneself is the style. Thirty years ago there were very few big yachts, nowadays there are so many. If one enters a marina with a merely big yacht, this is not enough.

Wally B’s bleeding-edge design by Lazzarini Pickering is a Wally company hallmark. (Click images to enlarge)

"The classic yachts, descendants of royal yachts, looked like ships. Nowadays people don’t want ships," says Nuvolari. "They want an ‘easy’ yacht that gives them contact with the sea. Our response is lots of windows and portholes, open space, big terraces on the decks with shade so one can sit outside while remaining protected and, most of all, easy access to the ocean. Today we are designing sterns that look very sporty and feel like beach clubs."

Nuvolari says trends are born in the 100- and sub-100-foot sector, particularly among the new wave of owners. "There is a generational leap, especially in the United States. Americans up to a few years ago were stuck on more traditional designs. Today, they are looking for a higher level of design content. Design cues from fifteen years of Azimut, Ferretti and Sunseeker have a strong relationship to automobile design. Americans will continue to push the evolution of Italian nautical design. Their boats have to be comfortable and convenient. The dimensions of passageways, the beds, the refrigerators and bathrooms must be bigger and more beautiful.

"We’re moving toward a kind of global design, as it were, a ‘global’ yacht. Typical Mediterranean taste is becoming more American as clients want more convenience and comfort, and the typical American yacht is taking on a more European [finish]."

Nuvolari reprises the automotive metaphor. "Recall how cars in Europe and America looked more than twenty years ago, and you can see exactly what’s happening in the nautical sector. The overtly individualistic Alfa Romeo and the enormous, overbearing Cadillacs and Chryslers of the last century no longer exist."

Fulvio De Simoni bases himself near Genoa in the small city of Sarzana, where the art of living well provides an oasis from industry. His designs have helped propel Pershing to the forefront of Italian motor-yacht brands. The elegance and boldness of De Simoni’s aesthetic envelops the power and performance of these gran turismos of the oceans.Like his Venetian colleague, De Simoni expresses a mitigated concern for the trend, led by the march of the luxury juggernaut, a race he says must end sooner or later. And he, too, sees the influence of the world’s non-nautical in Italian design.

"We see a trend in the ongoing refinement of a boat’s lines, similar to what exists in automotive design, notably softer and more finely worked forms and surfaces." For De Simoni, however, trend influencers are not lopsidedly American.

Nuvolari-Lenard took radically different approaches to designing the aft deck of oceAnco’s massive Y702. (Click image to enlarge)

"I do not want to go back to their so-called ‘classic’ yacht with its big window at the front and smaller lateral windows," says De Simoni. "I emphasize modern forms retaining a more dynamic feel while remaining true to the essence of simplicity. This is accomplished by diminishing the contrast between the shapes within the boat to give it a more elegant visual effect."

He follows the same theory in interiors. "The taste is simpler, more Japanese. Fewer superfluous objects and carefully selected materials are juxtaposed to create a relationship. The purity of this approach creates an overall effect that is not a declaration of opulence and wealth, but rather an elegant statement of grace, technology and design."

He criticizes residential-style interiors, particularly citing German and American builds. This thinking, De Simoni says, has a certain 1950s attitude, "with couches, armchairs, furniture…things that in my opinion are destined to disappear. Even on our big boatswe are tending toward more functional interiors."

The more modestly sized interiors of PJ’s 120-foot Hush. Both this and Y702 blend Italian trendiness with global style influences. Photographs by Jim Raycroft. (Click images to enlarge)

De Simoni says Italian designers may not have correctly interpreted American needs in the past, but that his studio is drafting concepts that "reflect our view of the American forma mentis (mind-set), where the boat mirrors the residence, not in its furnishings but in support of its lifestyle of socializing, cocktails and parties, as opposed to the traditions of cruising."

As for the emerging clientele from Russia, China and the Middle East, he is respectful of their growing influence. "In Europe, we tend to have a consolidated culture; clients from countries that have come late to our global village look without the burden of historical memory. They live in and for the moment. They look at what is represented as fashionable in Italian or American magazines, and they want it. They want to have a boat that looks like the latest, the most glamorous and the most well known."

Such an approach to yacht style, says De Simoni, plays to the strength of Italian designers. No doubt he and his contemporaries will continue to raise the bar.
 

Fulvio De Simoni
39 0187 621473
www.fulviodesimoni.it
Lazzarini Pickering
39 06 3210305
www.lazzarinipickering.com
Nuvolari-Lenard
39 041 5841888
www.nuvolari-lenard.com