FIRE FEATURES is a design/build firm specializing in fire features and custom site specific work; memorials, markers, water, and wind features, environmental sculpture; as well as product design and manufacturing. It is owned and operated by industrial designer and sculptor, Elena Colombo “I am ever inspired by the elemental nature of fire and the primal need we have for it. Fire serves both our need for beauty and our instinct to gather around a warm, lighted place; it is a destination wherever it burns. For 600,000 years we have shared food, stories and experiences around the fire; during the last hundred we seem to have abandoned the hearth as the focus of community. I would like to restore the hearth as a ceremonial place and as a point of convergence.” Colombo’s first fire feature, the Firebowl, is an individually made, carbon, Cor-Ten or stainless steel, copper or bronze outdoor gas appliance fitted with a 150,000 to 300,000 BTU burner, a connection for propane or natural gas, and a manual pilot ignition system for easy and safe lighting. The Firebowl is nationally certified for safety by OMNI_Test Laboratories, and has been nominated as ‘Best Outdoor Product’ by the 2004 Design and Decoration Awards, and the 2007 Grand Design Awards, and was the centerpiece of Jamie Durie’s Gold Medal Garden at the 2008 Chelsea Flower Show.