Francesca Romana Grossi

Estel Group is one of the most historical and important furniture manufacturer in Italy: the enterprise was founded in 1937 and is currently the leading Italian company in the production of office furniture. The company operated successfully for over 40 years in the home furnishing sector and only in 1980 entered the market of office furniture: today the production of office systems is the core business of the company. Estel has always made its products entirely in Italy, thanks to two modern industrial plants with over 70 thousand square meters where more than 300 workers are employed. Estel operates mainly in the Office Contract and also in supplies for Residence and Hotels. Major orders and references have been entrusted to Estel both in Italy (Banca Intesa, BNL, Prwc, Lavazza, Gucci, Allianz, FC Internazionale, Fastweb ...) and abroad (Roche- Abertis, Santander, HavasMedia, Ing Direct). One of the most important recent contract - with the largest American IT company - has engaged Estel for over 5 years. Estel has collaborated with great international designers such as Cini Boeri, Oscar Niemeyer, Jorge Pensi, Karim Rashid, Ross Lovegrove, Patrick Norguet, Ora Ito, Enzo Mari... Since 2015 Estel has started developing a new attitude for workplace space planning: the Italian Smart Office concept joins different kind of products - already present in the Estel array - for the realization of an interrelated work environment; this vision is based on the Activity Based Working theory, a transformational business strategy that provides people with a choice of settings for a variety of workplace activities. Besides the offices with a fixed setting (where everyone has their own desk), ABW-offices gives the personnel an opportunity to choose a place in the office where it is most suitable for them to complete their work tasks.