MICAD

Some ideas are worth revisiting. “Less is more” is one of them.

Last December, in an interview with Barche a Motore, our founder Amedeo Migali spoke about conscious simplification: reducing unnecessary complexity while preserving functionality, performance and the quality of life on board.
The principle remains highly relevant to our work today.

Access to the sea is often developed through side terraces, fold-out platforms and complex moving systems. These solutions can also increase weight, cost and maintenance requirements.

Our approach begins with a simple question: can the same result be achieved through a more direct solution?

One of our current 30-metre projects is being developed with fewer moving systems, exploring how simplification can create more usable space and greater efficiency.
Where do you stand: more features or greater simplicity?

Designing a yacht means designing an experience.

Ask someone about a yacht they love and they rarely begin with the length, the engines or the beam. They talk about a moment: dinner on deck as the sun goes down, the quiet of a bay reached after a long passage, the feeling of stepping off the stern straight into the sea.
That’s the real object of our work. Specifications, materials and engineering matter enormously, yet they serve a purpose beyond themselves. Behind every line we draw there’s a question that comes first: how will this make someone feel, here, on this water, on this day?

It’s the idea that guides everything we do, and over the coming weeks we want to show you what it looks like in practice, project by project and decision by decision.

Read the full article on our website www.micad.it to see where this idea began.

The most successful design on board is often the kind you never consciously notice: the handrail exactly where your hand expects it, the step that meets your foot without a thought, the light that softens at just the right hour. None of it announces itself, and that’s the whole point.

We put a great deal of effort into things no one will ever list as features: proportion, balance, the rhythm of a space as you move through it. They appear in no specification, yet they decide whether a yacht feels right.

In the end, an owner carries away the way the boat made them feel, far more than anything on the technical sheet.

Have you ever stepped aboard a boat that just felt right? Tell us about it.

The sea is where every project we draw will spend its life, and that gives us a responsibility we take seriously.

Every project that leaves our studio is meant for the water, and that simple fact carries real weight. Designing a yacht is not only a question of how it looks or how it performs, but of how lightly it can move through an environment that was never ours to begin with.

It’s why efficiency is never an afterthought for us. A hull optimised to travel further on less fuel, a displacement hull built for long distances, propulsion that wastes less energy: these are engineering choices, and they’re also a way of giving something back to the water that makes our work possible.

Today we simply want to say thank you to the sea: for the work, for the beauty, and for the standard it holds us to every single day.

What does the sea give you? We’d love to read it in the comments

From 8 to 13 September, MICAD will be at the Cannes Yachting Festival 2026.

The event will be an opportunity to meet clients, partners and professionals from across the yachting industry, share our latest work and exchange ideas about design, engineering and the future of life on board.

If you are attending the Festival, get in touch with us to meet the MICAD team.
See you in Cannes.

Every line is a choice. Part 3: the stern line.

In the earlier parts of this series we looked at how a single profile, the sheerline, sets the character of an entire yacht. Today we move aft, to the line that quietly shapes how you’ll spend your time on board.

For a long time, the stern was thought of simply as the end of the boat. We see it as where the experience begins. The height of the freeboard, the width of the bathing platform and the way the transom opens toward the water are all decisions made early in the project, and together they shape whether the sea stays at arm’s length or becomes part of everyday life on board.

Drawing this line means holding engineering and emotion together: structure, buoyancy and safety on one side, and the simple wish to step down to the water with a coffee in hand on the other. Each choice carries a consequence, so none of them are left to chance.

Follow the series: there’s one more line we’re saving for last.

Ferragosto is made for slowing down and enjoying the simple things. A swim in clear water, lunch on deck and an afternoon with no reason to hurry.

How are you spending the day? Share your Ferragosto with us in the comments. Happy Ferragosto from the MICAD team. ☀️🌊

MICAD in the July issue of BARCHE Magazine.

The Idea Factory column dedicates an in-depth feature to the studio and its growth into a firm able to bring a yacht to life in its entirety.

The article, written by Sacha Giannini, explores hydrodynamics, fast hulls and the logic of Life-Cycle Assessment, the approach that guides every project: a boat designed to last, to withstand time and to stay fully inspectable in every part.

Thanks to BARCHE Magazine for the space dedicated to our work and to the team behind it.

This is where a project often begins: a sketch. Not a finished image, but a way ofthinking out loud. Where does the sun lounge go? How do you move from the bar to the water? Which surfaces are decorative, which are structural?

On a single drawing, layout, ergonomics and atmosphere are negotiated long before any software is opened.

It is one of the most underrated phases of naval design and one of the most decisive. Get this right, and everything that follows has a clear direction.

Discover our design approach at www.micad.it