There is something quietly subversive about a marine engineering company taking over a corner of the Cortile d’Onore at the University of Milan, the beating heart of the Fuorisalone, surrounded by the names that define contemporary design. Yet that is exactly where Tecnimpianti Livorno, the yacht division of Navim Group, chose to be.
The installation was called “Racconti d’aMare”, and it turned offcuts, shavings and welding scraps from the Group’s own workshops into an immersive meditation on the sea. For a company whose daily business is davits, passerelles and bulwark doors, it was an unusual place to be seen. It was also, after speaking with Veronica Dall’Osso, Head of International Marketing and Communication, entirely consistent with how this company thinks.
A large group with an artisan soul
Navim Group has been in the business for more than 50 years, and it now counts sixteen branches across nine countries and more than 35,000 systems delivered worldwide, serving cruise ships, ferries, naval vessels, offshore platforms and superyachts. And yet the words it uses to describe itself are agile, smart and daring. Veronica Dall’Osso explains why the apparent contradiction holds together.
“The company began back in 1971 as an installation company, with a strong specialised workforce, and then gradually shifted to system design and engineering,” she says. “This has always allowed us to be very flexible, and flexibility has been the primary key of our strategy.” The proof is in the catalogue, or rather in the absence of one in the conventional sense. The group produces eight product lines, all completely customised. “We have no standard systems or stock products, but we work exclusively on made to order projects. Each system is unique and is built to the specific needs of the vessel and the client.”
When the shipyard becomes art
That family spirit is also what produced “Racconti d’aMare”, and to understand it you have to go back to its parent project, ShipyART. This neologism is the fusion of shipyard and art, coined to describe the unexpected creativity that surfaces inside yards and mechanical workshops while ships are being built and transformed. Since 2023 it has travelled from the MuCa shipbuilding museum in Monfalcone to the Mu.Ma maritime museum in Genoa, then to Livorno, the Barcolana in Trieste and, in 2025, to its first edition abroad at Seatrade Cruise Global, in Miami.
“Racconti d’aMare” is its offshoot, a collective exhibition of photography and materials dedicated to the sea. It reads the hidden poetry in the forms, functions and chemistry of naval and mechanical objects, using recycled scraps, offcuts and production waste as narrative elements. The visitor is led from a safe harbour, through the calm before the storm, out to open sea and stormy weather, then back to sunlight, in a multisensory labyrinth of sound, voices and digital suggestion.
The exhibition that took place at the Fuorisalone was an edition dedicated to megayacht design, with images reproduced on contrasting surfaces, from light voile to tactile wallpapers to metal that recalls the flame of welding. The whole project rests on a circular, sustainable approach, reusing what the group’s own factories would otherwise discard.
The positive reception has clearly moved Dall’Osso, who conceived the idea. “What can I say? A huge success for a project conceived very timidly, and one that makes us proud. Something that speaks straight to the heart of people, through our art. I’d like to thank our CEO Federico Olivieri and our President Giuseppe Cracolici, who have always supported the artistic activity, and also the marketing colleague Elena Di Giusto, who has always followed me.”
