Homes: A full house of assets

ENAR

  With a few Lebanese names solidified on the regional stage of furniture design, Lebanon is becoming more aware of furniture as an art form and investment. Executive spoke with some of the country’s biggest players in the field to discover where Lebanese designers are in the maturing world of Arab furniture design. Art that you sit on American University of Beirut graduate and London-based designer, Zaha Hadid, made a series of 24 chairs for international architecture and design firm Sawaya & Moroni, the prices for which start at $150,000. This price tag may come as a shock, but Gregory Gatserelia, founder of Beirut-based Gatserelia Design, urges customers to look at the pieces as assets. “It’s not money paid, it’s money invested,” he says. “So I tell my clients that art is money well invested if you have a good consultant.” Gatserelia just opened SMO Gallery in Beirut to showcase