Focus Creation
FOCUS is the original French fireplace designer known for its one-of-a-kind fireplaces with pure, organic lines, including suspended fireplaces with a rotating hearth. FOCUS has a collection of over forty models. The company was founded by artist Dominique Imbert, who designed the first Gyrofocus in 1968. Since then, this iconic fireplace has won an unequalled number of international awards and has been exhibited in modern art museums such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
With this emblematic fireplace, FOCUS has definitely entered into international design legend. The legendary GYROFOCUS is now available with an Ecodesign closed fireplace. While only about fifteen parts made up the original open wood-burning GYROFOCUS, more than 150 parts now make up the Glazed GYROFOCUS. Two years of Research and Development have been undertaken to design and preserve the original design, a fireplace capable of achieving energy and environmental performance that is among the most demanding in the world.
The only visible change is the sliding, curved glass pane which protects the central hearth without abandoning the fire’s original attributes: its legendary shape and its 360° swivel. The Glazed GYROFOCUS has paved the way for other FOCUS models to become glazed such as DOMOFOCUS and ERGOFOCUS, which also benefit from the same patented technology.
FOCUS has nearly 150 employees spread over two sites with both feet planted firmly between the Languedoc and Provence in the south of France. Proud of its Made In France moniker, FOCUS has its head in the stars and its eyes firmly set on the international scene. For over 50 years and across all continents, FOCUS has been shaking up design codes with its innovations. It was the first to move the fireplace from the wall to the center of the room, making it the focal point of the interior. FOCUS is more than fireplaces; it creates surprise, emotion, occasion. FOCUS creates the story.
Dominique Imbert, the creator of FOCUS, was born in 1940 in Montpellier in the south of France. After studying literature in London and Paris, he became, “by accident,” as he puts it, an ethnologist in Alaska and an assistant chef in Manhattan before being awarded a Doctorate in Sociology at the Sorbonne and taking a post-teaching literature in a Paris Lycée.
Then, after four years of teaching, he gave up the blackboard and set up a workshop making steel sculptures in a village north of Montpellier. Defying fundamental principles, he followed an inner quest to find the meaning behind the form. He stripped away all artifice, seeking an ever-purer expression for his dream of levitating fire. This blacksmith–philosopher, pragmatic and mystical, humanist and unsubmissive, had found his calling–his alchemic encounter with fire would metamorphosize his life, as well as the history of design.
After more than 50 years designing FOCUS’s prize-winning models, Dominique Imbert has left behind a dazzling collection.
Winning projects
Gyrofocus glazed
Gyrofocus glazed Central glazed wood fireplace with suspended and pivoting hearth. What is new is imperceptible at first glance: the iconic GYROFOCUS is now closed and promised a new
