Philanthropy | Designed to Give Back

In uniting these goals, Luminaire has taken a creative and engaging approach to philanthropy since its inception. Beginning with supporting the next wave of great creative visionaries, Luminaire has been an adamant sponsor of prestigious design awards in the United States and Europe including the Salone Satellite Awards in Italy. Passionate about helping young designers launch their careers, Luminaire is involved in exposing them to the international design scene through exhibitions in our showrooms in Miami and Chicago where they are introduced to some of the world’s most important contemporary design firms. Furthermore, the company continues to support museums in the US, promoting good design including the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago, the Mt. Lebanon Shaker Museum in upstate New York and the Wolfsonian Museums in Miami and several others organizations.

Love Series

The cornerstone of the company’s commitment to giving back is the Love series

In 2006, cofounders of Luminaire, Nasir and Nargis Kassamali decided that it was time to take a stand against cancer, one of the leading causes of death in the world and a disease that had also personally touched their lives. Driven by this personal connection, Luminaire has reached out to the international design community to help raise money for cancer research through an innovative and creative series of events. Luminaire’s Love series invites renowned designers from around the world to participate in creating one of a kind objects to be auctioned for charity.

For the first iteration of the series, PuppyLove, an international roster of contemporary designers adorned Eero Aarnio’s three-dimensional white plastic puppies as they saw fit. The amazingly inspired results of this effort were then auctioned generating over $450,000 in donations for University of Miami Sylvester’s Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Learn more about PuppyLove

Love Series

Designing for a Cause

The next installment of the series called upon designers, architects, and artists to employ paper as the central medium to create one-of-a-kind imaginative works for 2008’s PaperLove.

Together with Intramuros magazine, Luminaire conducted DesignLove, an exuberant exhibition and benefit auction evolving from the Kassamalis close friendship with the publication and featured designers. The international design publication donated over 90 original works in DuPont™ Corian® created by a roster of the most influential contemporary designers including Ron Arad, Tom Dixon, Yves Béhar, Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby and more. Altogether, the philanthropic “Love” series has raised over 1 million dollars which is directly distributed to support cancer research.

Pulling from designers with whom Luminaire has shared rich relationships with, these philanthropic events have also attracted the involvement of visionaries from diverse backgrounds including fashion designers such as Issey Miyake and architects such as Zaha Hadid, Enrique Norton and others.

Most recently, the company hosted GlasLove

Featuring over 30 unique glass pieces from celebrated designers such as the Campana Brothers and Marcel Wanders, GlasLove explored a new materiality in the Love series of philanthropic design events. The choice of material was intentional; the strong but fragile nature of glass was meant to reflect the spirit of those battling cancer.

Since the Love series launched, the company has continued to rethink the potential synergies between design and philanthropy. To date, the Love series has raised over one million dollars in support of efforts to find a cure.

Learn more about GlasLove