Chicago lost a design landmark over the summer when Barry Bursak closed City, the main place for people without interior designers to find futuristic furniture from Milan. But out of City`s ashes a phoenix rose, a Miami-based store called Luminaire.
Its owner, Nasir Kassamali, has three Luminaire stores in Florida; he buys in bulk directly from Italian manufacturers, pulling some prices down. For example: Philippe Starck`s three-legged Cafe Costes chair, with the little hole in back so waiters can sling the chair around with one finger, costs $985 at another high-style Chicago store; that store orders it from a New York importer for $490 plus shipping. At Luminaire, it`s $500.
Or Comme Des Garcons` harsh triangular table, with a top of two broken granite pieces. At City this sold for $1,900; at Luminaire, it`s $1,350.
Also at Luminaire: mostly black furniture in leather and wood, with granite, metal and glass, by Zanotta, B&B Italia, Arflex, Cassina. Many are pieces that City used to carry; the spirit of the two stores is similar.
Kassamali stalks the selling floor in neat gray trousers and a batlike unstructured black jacket, his voice so low you strain to hear his words.
”Classicism is everything,” he says, explaining why some furniture works and some does not. ”Geometry is the basic essence of good design.” He plans to host exhibitions and meet-the-designer seminars, as he does in Miami, ”for the public to understand the process of design-how it begins with little marks on a napkin.”
