the beginnings
Born in Ravenna on 18-01-1925 to parents who were also from Ravenna, father Giovanni Ceccarelli Capomastro and mother Oliva Zavaglia a postal worker, an only child.
He was a master sportsman and Italian champion marksman with the automatic pistol, aeromodeller, swimmer and, lastly, yachtsman.
From a young age of great Republican and anti-Fascist political faith.
He graduated in Engineering in Bologna in 1952, then attended the Higher School of Aeronautical Engineering in Rome in 1953.
Since 1954, he has always worked as a freelancer, with his office in Ravenna, at 7 Via Ignazio Sarti; enrolled in the Ravenna Order of Engineers at no. 44, he was awarded as one of the active Senior Engineers.
As a university co-rapporteur of various university theses in architecture in Florence and Venice, in hydraulic engineering in Bologna, in naval construction in Naples with the design of a pleasure boat.
He has taught in numerous master's courses, a great communicator with young people.
Ravenna
Always an attentive lover of his hometown, Ravenna, a place he never wanted to leave, even though more than once he had offers to move abroad.
He fought, always without any personal goal, for the enhancement of the Ravenna City Dockyard, the preservation of Sigarone and the covered market.
A great communicator with young people, he was a man projected into the future but always attached to and solidly grounded in his origins.
He always liked to define his architecture of land and sea as 'an integral design'.
ship design
Passionate about the sea, an excellent sailor and racer, winner of the San Remo international regattas with the Snipe, a classic still in existence, he entered the nautical design field, creating his "sea architecture". He realised his first project in 1946 and at the same time accumulated theoretical experience designing restrictor boats such as the SNIPE, on which he raced until 1964, obtaining international and national palmares. He then designed small wooden boats, the first of which was the "Malaguegna", others were medium-sized and still others were large, such as the Shaula and the Silvica built by the Cantiere De Cesari in Milano Marittima as well as the larger Morgana. All of his boats are very seaworthy, with innovative hull shapes, which are still sailing in different seas around the world today. He was the first to understand that in order to become popular, boating must go from prototype to series. He has always been a lover of 'social' yachting, trying to open it up to the general public; he has never been a designer of mega yachts, perhaps by choice. He was the first in Italy to believe in industrialisation, and in 1966 he built the first and largest unit in Europe at the time in reinforced fibreglass, the Classis 26, followed by the Boxer and the small dinghy Dingo for the same yard; and with the new material he dedicated himself to the series in numerous achievements for various Italian shipyards among which we remember the EC 19 for the Cranchi shipyard, EC 17 Mosquito for Baruffaldi, the EC 37 for the Alb Sails shipyard in Turin, the EC 21 Sciuscià, then the EC 7 for Conaver, the EC 8 for the Cantiere Padano and then the EC 26, EC 31 the Seariff 55, up to the Quarter Tonner "Forza Giò". then the Mini Tonner 'Anita'. the Miniwing series, a period in which his son Giovanni started working alongside him, who today has continued the Ceccarelli Yacht Design & Engineering brand's profession in the yachting sector.
the first yacht designer
He opened his first design stand at the Genoa International Fair in 1972 and was defined by the press as the initiator of Made in Italy design in yachting, he was the pioneer of the yacht design profession in Italy. He began to identify his yachts with an EC logo, an acronym for Epaminonda Ceccarelli; he designed logos and fonts, different yards but with the same name following a number that was nothing more than the overall length sometimes in metres and sometimes in feet. He produced the first prototype in the history of our yachting that came fifth at the International Week of La Rochelle in 1973, winning the offshore race, it was the EC 26 built in Cervia by Cantiere Fioravanti.
motor boats
He has been working in the motor boat sector since 1990, the year of the launch of the first boat, which was the Carnevali 36, followed by the internationally successful Carnevali 42, the C 30, the C 155, the C 160, the C 180 and finally the recently launched C 142. In the field of motor yachts, both for the hull sides and deckhouse, he was the first to introduce the concept of "round" surfaces. He liked to say that in "nature there are no edges", an idea that was innovative at the time and has now become a simple rule for many.
boating
He was President of AS.PRO.NA.DI from 1992 to 1995, for the association of yachting designers he designed the Diporthesis trophy. In the port sector for pleasure boating he designed the Marina di Cervia tourist port, he built the sea headquarters of the Circolo Velico Ravennate and the Ravenna Yacht Club, and several studies of ports such as Casalborsetti, Lido Adriano and others abroad in Albania are his. A lover of detail, each of his projects was what he liked to call integral. He worked right up to his last day always in his studio in Ravenna at 7, Via Ignazio Sarti, a sunny environment that has formed and seen the passage over the years of many of today's established professionals, both in the construction and pleasure boating sectors. He always had a great passion for writing, which accompanied him, along with his drawings, until the last day of his long and fascinating life journey. He passed away in Cesena on 24-11-2011 following a serious illness, and today rests in the family tomb in Ravenna, which he designed, intersecting circles made of reinforced concrete with a cross inside made of mosaic once again to remind us of his origins.
architechture
He won the first INARCH Prize of the Ministry of Education as an Architecture project for the Region of Emilia and Romagna in 1961 with his 'earth architectures'.
He won the international competition for the design of the Italian headquarters of the multinational Johnson Wax in Arese.
He was compared to Valle and Jungers in Germany with the building in Via Gradisca by the English magazine ARCHITECTURAL RECORD in the 1960s.
He was a lover of the use of reinforced concrete, which he saw as a modern material like fibreglass in boating.
He has signed numerous projects in the architectural field of residential, industrial and port architecture, taking care of every aspect from the design, to the supervision of works, to the design of details and furnishings, always with great care and attention to detail.
He has designed furniture, objects, jewellery and even glass chandeliers working for the Venini company in Venice.
