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Enrico Gobbi draws upon a lifetime’s worth of observation to create award-winning yacht designs.
As a boy growing up in Venice, all Enrico Gobbi saw were boats—and he liked what he saw. “You have to understand,” he says. “Venice is not like other cities in the world. There are no cars here, it’s just boats. Boats were all I knew.”
Because of his residence in that city by the sea, Gobbi gained a deep understanding of boats nearly through osmosis—both the way they work and their inherent beauties. But it was one moment in particular that changed his life forever. As a teenager, a friend’s father had a 40-meter yacht that he moored off Venice (a good friend to have indeed). One day Gobbi was invited aboard, and his jaw dropped. “You have to remember, this was the early 1990s,” he says. “A 60-meter yacht off Venice these days is commonplace, but 40-meters back then was huge. I remember looking around the interior and being in shock. I went home that night and it was all I could think about. I knew in that moment that I wanted to be a yacht designer.”
However when it was time for university, there were no yacht-design programs that the young man could find. So he did the next best thing, and studied architecture. It was a logical choice that paid dividends as Gobbi graduated and found his way back to the marine industry. As of press time, he has 50 yachts to his name, and manages to squeeze in some land-based projects as well. “Typically the owners will hire me for their yachts,” he says, “but then they see what I can do, and then maybe I get asked to do their home as well.”
Gobbi is currently riding a wave of success that is the envy of the yacht world. This Spring the 217-foot Rossinavi Alchemy won motoryacht of the year at the World Superyacht Awards. Gobbi did the interiors, and in the judges’ decision, they let the world know that Gobbi’s work in particular made the project sparkle. Of note was a glass staircase in the main salon that effectively disappears as you look at it. “The owner can open his door on the main deck master, and look straight through the yacht all the way to the stern. The staircase does nothing to impede his vision,” Gobbi says with well-earned pride.
He also points to Alchemy’s airy sense of space and her genteel color schemes as two hallmarks of the yacht’s design. These two traits are something that he sees in his current project with the Italian Yacht Group, the 170-foot Baglietto T52 Akula.
“In many ways Akula feels a lot like Alchemy,” he says. “The owners wanted her to feel really big inside so that was a key point for us,” he says. “I think when people step onboard they will feel like they are on a 70-meter boat, that’s how big she feels.”
Like Alchemy, Akula’s color scheme is what Gobbi describes as sobrio. There is no real direct translation to English, but it effectively means understated and high-class—think matte woods and staid colors and patterns. It’s a timeless type of design trait that will serve both yachts well on the resale market.
Akula represents the first collaboration between Gobbi and the Italian Yacht Group, but if it’s up to the designer, it won’t be the last. He has struck up a really lovely working relationship with the IYG team, and in particular with his fellow Italian Vittoria Santarone. “Vittoria and I have a deal,” he says with a laugh. “She is going to keep me really busy. She’s going to send me a new client every day this summer.”
That’s an especially heavy workload for Gobbi given that he has two 80-meter ISA projects and another large Turquoise superyacht already on the docket—even more so considering that his is a boutique design firm, and he is heavily involved with all the work that goes out the door. But then again, for Gobbi, yacht design is not really work. It’s a passion, and it’s all he’s ever known.
