A ceiling light by Sami El Khazen. – Credit: Bonhams/Paul R. Williams: Security Pacific National Bank Collection/Los Angeles Public Library

Sami El Khazen (Circa 1943-1988)

By Helena Madden — Born in Lebanon in the early 1940s, El Khazen was a pivotal interior designer in the Middle East, though much of his work has been lost. Many of the homes that he decorated were destroyed in the Lebanese Civil War that ravaged the country during the latter half of the 20th century. Still, bits and pieces of his influential oeuvre remain. He received one of his biggest commissions remarkably early in his career: the interior design of the Lebanese Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The centerpiece was a massive, nickel-plated-bronze and acrylic chandelier (pictured below) that he made in collaboration with Italian manufacturer Arredoluce. The Shah of Iran purchased it and displayed it in his palace dining room after re-engineering it into a slightly smaller piece; it sold at auction for $32,500 in 2018. What defined El Khazen’s approach was his ability to combine Eastern and Western traditions while also prioritizing Islamic art. His sensibility is most evident in his studio and home on the ground floor of the Rose House in Beirut, a colorful building constructed in 1882. El Khazen softened some of the Arabic architecture’s characteristic geometries to create a more calming environment for work. It was featured in Architectural Digest, which referred to him as “one of the Middle East’s most innovative designers.”

“Sami El Khazen was a Lebanese designer in the ’60s and ’70s whose legacy was interrupted by war, cut short by an early death and then erased by Beirut’s constant growth. The homes he had designed exist by word of mouth, and very little has been documented or published…. “The project that our studio takes a lot of inspiration from is his home and studio in the Rose House in Beirut, which is decaying now but was a beautiful rose-colored home in traditional Lebanese architecture. His space within the home was published in 1974 in Architectural Digest, and the article notes Sami’s creation of ‘Oriental Contemporary,’ blending East and West. The space is timeless, chic and, above all, has identity. We bring it up a lot to our clients who like contemporary design and architecture as a case study, since a lot of them are from different countries or first-generation born here in the States. We ask them to pull from the different identities within them to create a unique space that’s actually reflective of their journey, not just a Western image of what contemporary is.” —Homan Rajai, Studio Ahead