Maurizio Cossutti, one of the foremost Italian yacht designers, was born in Udine, graduated from the University of Trieste in 1986 with a degree in Naval Engineering, presenting an experimental thesis on the Americas Cup boats, including tank tests and various simulations of models using winged keels. That same year he entered the Starkel Studio in Trieste, later becoming a partner, handling the design of several cruising and competition boats. After leaving the studio, he began designing on his own, developing both new boats and retrofitting existing ones.

In 2003, with Alessandro Vismara and Freek Koppelmans, he created the “Marine Technologies Boatyard” at Villesse, near Gorizia in north-eastern Italy, a place where cruise and race boats in composite materials were designed and built. In the years 2003-2005, several Cossutti-Vismara custom-built boats (V34, V40, V46) were constructed.

In 2005, the entrepreneur Massimo Breggion joined the company as shareholder and the name of the boatyard was changed to “2M Marine”. Here the new M-series boats were designed and built, the first being the M37.

In 2008, Maurizio Cossutti left the boatyard to start his own studio and founded Cossutti Yacht Design. The studio’s first projects were the NM43 and NM38, designed for the Nautilus boatyard of Rome, and the Bonin 31 and 358 IRC. At the same time, the studio continued to follow various teams and owners in the optimization of appendages and sail plans for various boats, mainly those engaged in the ORC and IRC circuits. From the very outset, there have been numerous collaborations at various levels with boat owners and top teams as, for example, optimizations implemented on the Brava and Mascalzone Latino.

Meanwhile, Alessandro Ganz joined the studio. Born in Valdobbiadene, near Treviso, Alessandro is a naval engineer who graduated from the University of Trieste in 2008 and received a Master’s Degree in Maritime Engineering Sciences — Yacht and Small Craft — from the University of Southampton, presenting an experimental thesis on shape optimization of the underwater hull of a cruising motor catamaran, including a series of towing tank tests. Alessandro started collaborating with Cossutti Yacht Design in 2009 working on the NM38 and, in the following years, actively participated in the development of the company’s most important projects.

In 2013, Alessandro became a partner and the name studio was changed to “Cossutti Yacht Design – Cossutti & Ganz Partners”. During that same period, a professional partnership commenced with the Venetian company Italia Yachts, working on the boatyard’s first project for the boat Italia 10.98. This was followed by the Italia 13.98, which won the prestigious “European Yacht of the Year” award in 2013.

In 2015 and 2016, the two ORC one-offs — Next 37 and Katariina II — were launched in Italy and in Estonia and this was followed by a project for a new 37 footer one-off built by Ridas Yachts boatyard in Tallin. Partnerships with major boatyards increasingly became the core business of the studio which, in addition to continuing collaboration with Italia Yachts, also completed new projects for Salona, More Boats (More 55 and More 40) and then for the German boatyard Bavaria Yachtbau.

Bavaria C57, the first boat designed by Cossutti Yacht Design for the German boatyard — which selected our studio for the design of its flagship craft — was presented in 2017. The reviews from critical insiders and the general public alike were unanimously favorable, leading the boatyard to commission the studio to design two others fast-cruisers, the C45 and the C50, presented at Boot in Dusseldorf in January 2018. Collaboration with the Bavaria shipyard has continued to grow, leading to the project for the Bavaria C42, to be presented at Boot in Dusseldorf in January 2020.

More recently, the studio can also boast its collaboration with one of the world’s most prestigious boatyards: Nautor’s Swan. Collaboration with Nautor began in the summer of 2018 with the development of the structures and engineering for the Swan 48, designed by the renowned Argentinean designer, German Frers, with interiors by Misa Poggi.