Lighting KAIA: products of a unique European creative fusion

KAIA means light and shadow. Designers from this creative grouping love to combine opposites. The KAIA brand is shaped by a whole range of European designers, artists from family craft workshops, and other personalities from among architects and artistically gifted souls scattered across Europe. From this European creative collaboration, unique lighting fixtures of ultimate design and the highest quality are born. Since 2013, KAIA has been based in London, while the production workshop is traditionally located in Austria, in Judenau near Vienna. Since 2021, KAIA also has a workshop and office near Munich.

KAIA combines applied arts, architecture, and craftsmanship with the ambition to penetrate to the essence of the objects that surround us in our homes. KAIA lights are recognizable by their pure functional beauty, simplicity, timelessness, clean shapes, and elegance shaped by geometric perfection. All the lighting fixtures are skillfully, and above all, handmade by craftsmen from traditional, mostly family-owned manufactories in Austria and Germany, with blown glass produced in the Czech Republic. The KAIA team focuses on every detail to ensure that all unique and elegant products bearing this brand will be of the highest quality. All chandeliers, wall sconces, floor lamps, and table lamps, whether made of glass, marble, or metal, undergo a thorough quality control before assembly and final installation in the workshop near Vienna.

KAIA designers are in close contact with collaborating manufacturers and together explore the widest range of materials, always with the aim of pushing the boundaries of conventional craftsmanship and design a step further. In addition to seeking beauty and perfection in craftsmanship, the entire KAIA team has one important aspect in focus at all times: sustainability. The central point of ecological thinking at KAIA is material. The main material used for the production of KAIA lighting fixtures is brass created from a zinc and copper alloy. Whenever possible, KAIA designers avoid the use of any plastics. As you browse through the KAIA lighting collection, you will notice that among the most commonly used metal finishes are patinated and brushed brass along with brushed and polished nickel. This is because KAIA approaches metal naturally and avoids powder and conventional coating. During its time in the European market, the KAIA brand has built a network of production family workshops that not only meet the highest standards of craftsmanship but also share values of sustainability, waste minimization, or even a zero-waste approach.

Katrin Grund shares a kind of fateful connection with the KAIA brand. Just like Katrin, the creative director and general manager of KAIA, Manuela Szewald, came to design and creative work later in life after building a career in entirely different business sectors. “In this regard, our career paths are indeed quite similar,” smiles Katrin Grund. “I completely understand the philosophy on which the KAIA brand was founded. Manuela established it for similar reasons and with the same love for design as I did with my concept store MONOBRAND. Perhaps our path to design was not direct and mapped out from our studies, but it is all the more a path taken sincerely, with heart on the sleeve, with a passion for beauty and a desire to create what we love and what fulfills us. And I believe that this is evident in both of our work,” concludes Katrin Grund.