Italian brand Febal Casa inaugurated their Italian mono furnishing store in Dubai recently and we paid a visit to find out more. Emanuel Colombini, Chairman Colombini Group tells us more.
The layout of the new Febal Casa store in Dubai, occupying roughly 430 square metres, located in Al Marabea , presents the brand’s idea of a contemporary home and living, and is designed to enhance the value of the various collections while offering customers a truly unique buying experience. The store concept involves the insertion of an exclusive space where the customer can benefit from a high-quality consulting service, a genuine Area Experience in which to view complete samples and choose from various customised furniture proposals.
The watchword is Italian lifestyle. Innovative concepts and high quality are the true protagonists of the showroom, conceived and set up to offer a true experience of the furnishing of a house, with a touch of Italian taste, but adapted to the needs of local consumers.
What is the USP of Febal Casa?
Febal Casa is a leader in the Total Living segment offering furnishing solutions for every single room in the home, with highly customizable compositions and refined design: kitchens, living rooms, sofas, tables, chairs, complete master bedrooms, kids’ rooms and teen bedrooms.
The exclusive elegance which we always look for in our style is expressed through the adoption of a Total Living production philosophy where the use of finishes, accessories and materials can be applied across the board and uniformly to all the products in the kitchen, living and bedroom areas, stamping your own unique and unmistakable mark on them.
What does the customer get when he invests in a Febal Casa piece?
The core business of the brand was originally focused on kitchens, but since 2009 our Group has developed a Total Living approach, allowing the customer to furnish various rooms of the house, from the kitchen, to the living room to master bedrooms and kids’ rooms. We offer a wide variety of shapes, colors, and materials with different characteristics, but at the same time coordinated, ensuring a balance and stylistic coherence between the different spaces of the home.
Even for the living area, for example, our sofa range responds to different styles and allows multiple combinations capable of furnishing spaces with coherence and personality.
Can you talk about your unique collaborations with designers?
Over the years, major investments have been made, expanding the product range and collaborating with various designers and architects of international fame such as Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez, Alfredo Zengiaro, Dario Poles and Studio Ferriani Firenze. Febal Casa went from being a kitchen specialist covering different price ranges from entry level to the premium segment, to then introduce the Febal Giorno and Febal Notte lines by adding the living area and the sleeping area to the offered range and thus transforming the brand from Febal into Febal Casa.
Today Febal Casa carries on a Total look concept satisfying more sophisticated style needs. The collection responds to the growing demand for eclectic and refined furnishings, a premium and accessible design, featuring clean lines and sober elegance, refined workmanship, a cross between materials and finishes and innovative technical details.
This project, led by the artistic direction of Paolo Colombo (partner and founder of Studio A++), is conceived for the whole house with the CUCINA. GIORNO. NOTTE. SOFAS. MOMENTI. collections where the philosophy of designing lifestyle is instilled, aiming at satisfying living with stylistic coherence, guaranteeing its customers a proposal that can provide complete and structured versatility for the entire range.
Can you tell us about your unique kitchen designs that blend form and function?
Usability is an integral part of Febal Casa’s DNA. At the center of research and design, functional design is the leitmotif, capable of mixing aesthetic and practical design with a stylistic coherence that ranges in every room of the house, from the kitchen to living room to the bedroom area.
Speaking of kitchens, the Kaleidos system, offering aluminum structures anchored to the wall or ceiling, allows a completely free interpretation of space and therefore also personalizing the concept of usability.
The Era model allows to change the position of the handle grip thus ensuring maximum functional and stylistic customization, while the door with a 37° inclination found in CHARME 37 is designed to guarantee maximum ergonomics and strong distinctive elements in terms of aesthetics.
The Era model features the X and Y sliding countertops transforming the classic central island into a multitasking support surface, designed for maximum space optimization. Sliding over the main countertop with two different mechanical movements, they reveal a worktop that can be accessorized, combining functionality and aesthetic appeal.
Another absolutely interesting project carried out by the company is KGR, acronym for Kitchen Garden Revolution. A system for growing indoor plants equipped with trays for soil growing and LED lighting with lamps designed specifically for the growth of small fruits and vegetables.
What are the top trends of the season?
Warmth, wellbeing, versatility. In my opinion home interiors will be increasingly hybrid and multifunctional.
We will work more from home. We will spend more time in a more or less spacious single room. The living areas will be both convivial places and offices, a space to relax, for intense creativity and concentration. The furniture will change; indeed, it has already changed. And it will increasingly adapt to being the ideal setting for the many domestic functions and technology that is permeable to professional and private use.
Design is ready and so are companies like ours. This can be seen in the projects born during the past year and half. Furniture that changes function according to one’s needs.
In terms of materials, to create the most beautiful we use the latest technologies, such as silk matte paints that are soft to the touch.
Other materials such as laminates have a very realistic rendering and are inspired by the trends of the moment: stones, fabrics, textures, or even more refined woods.
In the wardrobes we also find stopsol, smoked or mirrored glass with which it is possible to create visual games and a “see-through” effect.
Has the pandemic affected the choices of people to go for more inclusive spaces and designs that allow for work and play?
Suddenly and unexpectedly, the house has become the center of our life again. For us this represented a further opportunity: we listened to the needs to include multifunctional products and home areas that last over time and can be used for different purposes. We have worked to provide solutions that give a concrete answer to the challenges that this new dimension of domestic spaces has posed on us.
The house is a fluid, changing space. A place that welcomes people’s lives, made up of different facets: from sharing a dinner with friends, to work, indoor training and well-being.
Remote working – enhanced by the arrival of Covid19 – certainly represents an element that has redesigned the role of the home and the technological needs of those who live within. We have been able to accommodate the needs of customers, eager to revise the room’s layout and make purchases that have been postponed for some time. Thus, in this last year we have accelerated the development of some products and specific initiatives, effectively anticipating market trends.
An example and a concrete answer is our Agio collection. That is products and furnishing solutions that transform domestic spaces in a more conscious and rational way. Like the word Agio means: At ease. Offering multifunctional furnishings that organize elegant and discreet spaces for home working within the home.
How do you incorporate that in your designs?
Through the re-design of elements usually intended for the living area, such as suspended shelves and containment boiserie, Febal Casa proposes in a contemporary and innovative key, transversal solutions capable of transforming themselves according to one’s needs.
The workspace can be converted into a storage space or into a furnishing composition, thanks to the versatility of modules and high quality of construction material.
We want to offer an increasingly comfortable and functional way of living and working at home. Modularity is the key: MODULA, the new collection of Febal Casa kitchens is conceived to optimize space with solutions that adapt to different architectures, thanks to its extensive modularity and customizability.
What about sustainability? Does it play an important part in your designs?
For us, sustainability means finding new paths while respecting the plurality of our customers’ needs. This translates into smart solutions that are not only environmentally friendly but also offer concrete added value to our customers:
– Durability: we design products with a longer useful life to reduce waste and offer high quality standards
– Optimized spaces: we reduce the waste of building materials by optimizing spaces with our furnishing solutions that adapt to different architectures thanks to their extensive modularity and customization.
– Easily sanitized materials: one of the most significant investments for our Group is in the search for easily sanitized materials such as ceramic, used for kitchen tops and more, which thanks to the absence of porosity guarantees a high level of hygiene. We have also created partnerships with manufacturers of technological systems capable of filtering the air in wardrobes and sanitizing clothing
Everybody talks about materials a little today, why?
I think sustainable thinking is generative thinking. Being circular does not mean doing the same things as always with ecological materials but inventing new ways or even changing goals.
We use glass and aluminum, infinitely recyclable, to create resistant products and at the same time of great aesthetic impact, and PET for safe surfaces that do not release any toxic emissions during the production and use cycle.
We produce melamine-faced structures and doors made up of ecological panels from FSC® certified suppliers who use pre- and post-consumer wood that is given a second life by virtue of a circular economy that feeds itself, without going to affect our forest heritage.
We choose 100% natural materials made extraordinary by innovative processes such as sintering technology that allows you to create ceramic stones without the use of glues and pollutants.