Natuzzi Italia brings Mediterranean warmth to Dubai Design Week with immersive space transformation

The first thing you notice in Natuzzi Italia’s space at Dubai Design Week is the light. It’s soft, golden, and calm, as if the room itself knows how to exhale. Pasquale Junior Natuzzi, the brand’s Project & Contract Chief Officer, calls that feeling “warmth”, and believes it’s at the heart of the Mediterranean way of living. Warmth, he says, “delivers the sense of what the Mediterranean lifestyle is,” shaped by centuries of cultural exchange in Puglia, from Greeks and Romans to Turks and Arabs. This history created a welcoming culture that translates directly into the brand’s design language.

For Natuzzi, hospitality is something you sense in the room around you, in materials, sun-toned hues, and textures that feel imperfect in a comforting way. Visitors should feel embraced: “Warm lights, warm ambience, warm spaces.” This approach is at the core of the brand’s evolution: not merely creating furniture, but shaping environments. Pasquale has guided Natuzzi from a product-driven house into a “space-transformation brand”. The business shifted from retail to B2B2C collaborations with interior designers and architects. “With them starts the journey of envisioning the space of their clients,” he says.

Downtown Design demonstrated this shift. Natuzzi’s booth was designed by Etereo, a Dubai-based practice with Italian roots. Their work blends Italian modernism with the generous spatial culture of the GCC. Surfaces became narratives: textured plaster, mirrored fragments, bronze accents, and bespoke wallpapers. Pasquale noticed guests reaching out to touch the walls. “They’re finally appreciating something more than just the product,” he says. “For me, that was a win.”

Running through the space was the root, the central motif of Natuzzi’s current visual identity. The root, he explains, is “the graphic synthesis of the cut of the trunk of an olive tree,” and also represents the cultural roots of Puglia, the soil, the people, the contours of the land. It communicates sentiment, not just surface.

Heritage is embedded in the process. Pasquale’s father founded the company in southern Italy, in a place where “there were only sheep, cows and sometimes olive trees.” Building a design house from that origin formed an ethic of perseverance, integrity, and responsibility toward local communities. For decades, production and craft have stayed in Italy. Pasquale compares this loyalty to asking Hermès to abandon leather: “You would change their DNA so strongly that eventually it wouldn’t be Hermès anymore.” For Natuzzi, the entire chain is vitally important, from dreaming to designing to making the finished goods.

At the heart of the exhibit sat Amama, a modular sofa designed by Andrea Steidl. Amama is “extremely modular”, capable of endless configurations — rocket-shaped, C-shaped, dual-faced. Pasquale loves its visual ease: softly wrecked pillows and surfaces that don’t demand perfection. “It wants to express visual comfort,” he says, the comfort of real life, where cushions move, guests spread out, and rooms adapt.

Dubai itself influences Pasquale’s thinking. He sees Dubai not as a regional hub, but as a global mirror. “Dubai is not just the GCC. Now it’s the world,” he says. What inspires him here is architecture’s social purpose: homes designed to host, dining tables for many, spaces built for gathering. Hospitality, he believes, is taken to “a luxurious level that very few places in the world can compete with.”

Natuzzi Harmony Residences, launched last year, marked a milestone, a residential concept designed entirely by the brand. It proved Natuzzi’s ability to think in complete ecosystems: façades, layout, amenities, interiors. It confirmed that the brand is “ready to transform spaces, to design environments.”

Pasquale keeps returning to one central idea: warmth. “I think we all need to hug each other,” he says.

He wants Natuzzi environments to create ease, spaces that gently soften the mood. “They should leave thinking, ‘Wow, that was nice.’” For him, achieving that response through design, light and material is the core intention. behind how the brand shapes space.