There was a time when art galleries were places for experimentation and education, before being commercial spaces. Places to promote the avant-gardes that one knew would mark history. Contexts wherein – as paradoxical as it might seem – the orientation towards radical research met with the desire to support works and artists destined for eternity.
For 50 years, Luminaire has played this role, but in the design world. Nasir and Nargis Kassamali, of Indian descent but migrated from Kenya to the United States in 1973 after training in Europe, had planned to create this space since their youth. “Since age 16, I dreamed of having something like a church, where people could come to experience good design,” says Nasir Kassamali.
The association between a showroom and a church is not accidental. Starting from the first 500-square-foot kiosk in Miami in 1974, Luminaire was conceived not as a shop, but as a place to educate the entire American public about quality design (American, European, and Middle Eastern). Previously, interior designers mediated access to design, thus restricting it to educated and affluent customers.
Success was immediate. Openings followed in Coral Gables (1984), Chicago (1989), Miami Airport (2000), Los Angeles (2018), and other destinations. The size of the spaces grew, as they became venues for meeting and training with designers such as the Bouroullec brothers, Antonio Citterio, Naoto Fukasawa, Piero Lissoni, and many others. Lines grew (e.g. outdoor, with Outdoor Therapy) and initiatives expanded, with the temporary concept stores LuminaireX, where food, design, fashion, and culture come together. In 2020, the prestigious Compasso d’Oro award arrived. And Luminaire started operating the flagship stores of Edra Miami, Poltrona Frau Los Angeles and San Francisco, and Molteni&C. San Francisco.
In these 50 years, Nasir and Nargis Kassamali have told their relationship with design to private and professional audiences, with one constant idea: design is a third skin, following that of the body and clothing. As a skin, design configures how we think about and interact with space, and thus affects the quality of our lives.
