Growing up the daughter of legendary architect Richard Meier, “Thinking about design started at a very young age,” Ana Meier explains. “It’s been a lifelong influence.” The genetic connection is undeniable: Ana’s background in art and architecture led her to releasing a furniture collection with Los Angeles designer Charlie Ferrer in 2009, and eventually to opening her eponymous firm.
Her latest collaboration, however, brings her together with her father for the first time professionally to launch the Richard Meier Light collection, informed by the Pritzker Prize winner’s own pared-back, classic style. “I’ve always wanted to work with lighting and create lights, and light is a major part of my dad’s work,” she says of both her and her father’s first lighting collection.
The modern Cycladic Square sconce is divided in two halves with one side illuminated and the other in shadow.
The duo brought on lighting designer Hervé Descottes, a longtime collaborator of Richard’s, to help the collection take shape. Ana says she would “start with a drawing, then I would show the drawing to my dad, he would provide some edits and feedback, and we would share with Hervé and talk feasibility.” Richard chalks up his role as providing moral support. “There are a lot of lights on the market,” he says, but “she’s managed to show a better way of doing it, both from a design and a technological point of view.”
And yet, their design philosophies clearly align. “Design is the easy part,” says Ana, “it’s the manufacturing that’s so complicated.” “It’s one thing to design something, it’s another to get them made properly,” Richard adds, which prompted the trio to work very closely with the manufacturers—mostly small firms aside from WonderGlass, which handled the glass pendants. For the tasteful 12-piece collection, simplicity is key, with fixtures—all in Richard’s signature white—made of Corian, glass, and aluminum ranging from the Cycladic Circle or Square pendant where its namesake shape is divided in half, one side lit and the other not, to the cube-shaped Fire Island floor lamps inspired by different perspectives of early homes found on the Long Island, New York beach destination, including Richard’s 2013 creation. “We wanted to create beautiful objects that are sculptural, almost like pieces of art, but that are also functional,” she explains.
Inspired by geometry, the handblown Cycladic Circle sconce is made of Corian, features adjustable LEDs, and is topped with powdercoated aluminum.
Plans are already in the works to expand the lighting series, meaning this familial collaboration is just getting started. “It’s not only fun, it’s a nice way [to get us] working together,” Richard says. Adds Ana: “My dad and I have been collaborating in different ways throughout my whole life, so it’s a natural relationship.”
