Richard Meier Launches 12-Piece Lighting Collection

Strong geometries and an abundance of white may be signature aesthetics in the buildings of Pritzker Prize–winning Richard Meier, but they also prominently factor into his designs of a smaller scale. This week, Richard Meier Light officially launched in New York City at the Ralph Pucci showroom, and the 12-piece collection bears the architect’s unmistakable trademark style.

“Architecture has the power to inspire, to elevate the spirit, to feed both the mind and the body,” said Meier in a statement. “With this collection, we have distilled this feeling into objects that touch people inside the spaces where they live, work and visit.” The collection — really a collaborative effort between Meier and product designer Ana Meier and lighting master Hervé Descottes — includes pendants, table lamps, sconces and floor lamps that are all defined by geometric minimalism and an ethereal quality.

Ana Meier added, “I was moved to take recurring themes and forms in Richard’s work and translate them into sculptural objects that are interacted with every day.” There are the Fire Island I, II and III floor lamps, for example, whose column-like forms punched with asymmetric apertures take inspiration from different perspectives of the early homes Richard Meier designed on Fire Island and Long Island and in Connecticut. The Barcelona I sconce evokes the façade of Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona with a composition of rectangles, whereas the Barcelona II sconce is more of a cylindrical design of harmonious curves.

The luminaires are made of a combination of Glacier White Corian, glass and aluminum depending on the design. London-based WonderGlass, the young glass lighting manufacturer behind recent fixtures by Zaha Hadid and John Pawson, fabricated select handblown glass luminaires in the Meier collection. Lamping is LED specifiable in four white-color temperatures or tunable white on request.

“These pieces provide a new experience of space, where the user carefully controls the interplay of form and shadow,” described Descottes, founder of lighting design firm L’Observatoire International. “The designs reveal a dialogue between geometries at different scales while retaining the precision so distinctive of Richard’s canon of work.” At press time, the collection is exclusively available in the U.S. through Ralph Pucci International.