Departure into a futuristic era

Yachting | 2025

If you delve into the history of yacht design, there are very few offices that have lasted for decades. Zuccon International is one such name that enjoys an extremely high reputation among yacht aficionados and industry insiders. The design studio was founded in Rome in 1972 by the newly qualified architect Giovanni Zuccon together with his wife and colleague Paola Galeazzi.

The breakthrough in the yacht industry came in 1976, when the studio won the pitch of the then still very active Posillipo shipyard for an 18-metre yacht made of fiberglass. This was the beginning of a successful collaboration with the Neapolitan shipyard, which led to the design of a total of 17 yachts. Zuccon went on to design two patrol boats of 23 and 16 metres in length for Baglietto (1985 and 1986) as well as the famous 46-metre yacht “Al Fahed” in 1986, before entering into a pioneering collaboration four years later with the Ferretti Group, then and now a leading Italian shipyard conglomerate. Zuccon designed more than 40 yachts for the Ferretti Group.

As in many family-run companies, the question of how to ensure the continued existence of the studio naturally arose at some point at Zuccon International. And so, in 2004, Zuccon’s children Bernardo and Martina officially joined the company and gradually took over its management. Their creative work began with the redesign of the Ferretti Group’s model ranges. Among other things, they developed the new custom line models Navetta 37, 33 and 42 as well as the Ferretti yachts 850, 700, 780, 450 and 920. A particularly successful partnership was formed under Bernardo and Martina’s direction with the Sanlorenzo shipyard, which is now listed on the stock exchange and is one of the biggest players in the global yacht industry. The most striking result of this collaboration was the SL102 Asymmetric, an innovative design that set new standards with its asymmetrical design.

Like their parents, Bernardo and Martina Zuccon do not only work in the yachting segment. They designed a fabric collection together with Dedar and a sofa with Poltrona Frau. And the fact that the children have long since emancipated themselves was recently made abundantly clear: they received the Compasso D’Oro 2024, the oldest and most important prize for industrial design at international level, for the Sanlorenzo SP 110.