Azimut brings Michele De Lucchi aboard for the Magellano 27M's sculpted wooden interior

Azimut is launching the Magellano 27M in September 2026 with an interior designed by Michele De Lucchi, the Italian architect's first project on water after more than a decade working on land for the yard, including its Piedmont headquarters.

The 27M is the third generation of the Magellano range, a long-range cruiser line Azimut first launched in 2009 as what chair Giovanna Vitelli calls the SUV of the seas: built to balance comfort and safety with distance and speed rather than raw performance.

De Lucchi worked with Davide Angeli under his own studio, AMDL Circle, on the interior, while Finnish naval architect Jarkko Jamsen distilled the exterior to what Azimut describes as just a few lines. The boat keeps the range's dual-mode hull, which lets guests dine and relax at both slow and fast cruising speeds.

The interior is built predominantly from light oak, a wood De Lucchi chose for a patina he says will keep evolving with each voyage. Shape is picked out with travertine, metal and integrated lighting, including Metafisica and Tolomeo fixtures, rather than applied ornament.

Movement through the cabins is carried by the woodworking itself: walnut detailing, subtle ribbing, flame treatments and hand-chiselled Japanese Naguri finishes. A wall in the primary bedroom is upholstered in Hosoo fabric, handwoven on a traditional loom at the Kyoto textile house founded in 1688, patterned to echo the growth rings of a tree trunk.

De Lucchi has said the Japanese influence was deliberate. For Italians, he said, Japan is the other side of the moon, not only geographically but because it approaches working with the hands with the same emotional intensity, in a completely opposite way, and that meeting of cultures produces things neither side could make alone.

Why Azimut chose De Lucchi

Vitelli, who joined her father's company in 2000, says each Azimut range needs a designer whose sensibility matches its own: you need to find two souls that match. She paired the Magellano's adventurous character with De Lucchi's, describing him as a philosopher, leader and humanist rather than simply a decorator.

De Lucchi's resume outside boats is what makes the pairing notable. He was creative director at Olivetti, co-founded the radical Memphis Group design collective in the 1980s, and is currently creative director of Triennale Milano, the Italian design and art institution. Vitelli says his background lies in experiencing new limits, not just in architecture.

On deck, the main living area is shaded by a fan-shaped brise-soleil made of teak, a reference De Lucchi and Azimut trace to the pergolas, patios, loggias and porticos of old Mediterranean aristocratic houses. The aim, they say, is domestic warmth set against the changing moods of open water.

Vitelli calls the result an interior about atmosphere, rather than ornament, a description she also applies to De Lucchi's earlier work for Azimut's exhibitions, boat shows and the Piedmont headquarters he designed for the company. The Magellano 27M is his first attempt to carry that language onto a moving vessel.

What the design signals for luxury yachting

Vitelli frames the 27M as part of a post-pandemic mindset shift in luxury yachting, where owners increasingly treat exploring the world as a form of self-exploration rather than pure escapism. Wellness and cultural considerations, she says, now shape design briefs the way speed and range once did alone.

We track architect-led collaborations of this kind in our coverage of home design, where a named designer's first marine project, rather than a house studio's routine work, is what tends to distinguish one launch from the next yard's equivalent model.

For owners furnishing beyond the boat itself, our own edit of the best online furniture stores covers pieces in the same register the Magellano borrows from: light oak, travertine and integrated lighting among them, for anyone assembling a similarly restrained material palette on land.

Azimut has not disclosed pricing or a full specification sheet for the Magellano 27M. Vitelli describes the shift behind it as one where wellness and culture now inform the yard's design briefs alongside the speed and range that defined the range since 2009.

De Lucchi says working on a boat for the first time let him imagine an interior that was not separate from what was happening around it, but could change continuously with the journey and with the state of mind of whoever was aboard.