From historic to ultra-modern, German-born Miami-based designer Uli Petzold transforms residential and commercial settings around the world with an elevated approach to light.
BY JEAN NAYAR
Over the course of his decades-long career, designer Uli Petzold’s mission has been the same: To make other people look and feel good. Born in Frankfurt and raised in Berlin, he started working in fashion – furs in particular – before moving to work as a freelance designer in Montreal, New York, South Korea, and Paris, where he designed products, packaging, accessories, and showrooms for major companies like Balenciaga and Mercedes Benz until a colleague convinced him to move to back to the U.S. and settle in Miami in I997.
“I was married by then with three young children – and Miami’s low-key, sunny environs seemed hospitable for a growing family,” says Petzold. So he took a leap, purchased a home in the Sunset Islands, and started fresh. “It wasn’t exactly an easy start,” admits the designer. “The kids hardly spoke English and we knew almost no one.” Before long, though, a random meeting with tech entrepreneur Peter Loftin changed his trajectory. “He had just purchased Gianni Versace’s mansion on Ocean Drive with plans to turn the estate into a luxury hotel and asked me if I could help to illuminate it,” recalls Petzold. “By doing so I became known virtually overnight as a lighting guru.” Over the years that followed, he steadily built his reputation in the field-working with world-class architects like Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, and Arquitectonica and lighting the homes of high-profile clients like baseball star Alex Rodriguez and Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi as well as luxury condominium buildings, retail shops, restaurants, and hotels across the country from Miami and L.A. to New York and the Hamptons.
Much of his success springs from his philosophy that good lighting should be subconsciously sensed rather than seen. By minimizing the light sources and integrating them into the architecture, he brings out the best in what he’s illuminating-be it people, food, interiors, or cars (as he did for his first lighting project in a showroom for Mercedes Benz).” We want people to walk into the rooms we illuminate and feel crazy comfortable without knowing why,” says Petzold. Thanks to a collection of proprietary glare-free light sources he has developed over time, produces in Germany, and markets under his own brand known as Apure, the uplifting atmosphere Petzold conjures in the environments he illuminates is now experienced in high-end homes and commercial settings worldwide.
With headquarters in Miami, where Petzold launched his company eleven years ago and now operates with his oldest son, Philipp, Apure also includes a flagship showroom in Palma de Mallorca, overseen by his younger son, Julius, as well as stores in Zurich, Denmark, and Istanbul along with a network of I40 dealers who distribute his products around the globe. While projects such as Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue store, the AKA Hotel, and headquarters offices for some of the world’s top tech companies in New York represent recent examples of his firm’s commercial work, forays
into lighting for super yachts built in Holland under the company’s new offshoot, Apure Marine, and a collection of decorative fixtures for consumers launching in early 2025 under the name Studio Apure promise to broaden the lighting impresario’s reach in making the world a brighter–and more beautiful – place in the years ahead. apurelighting.com
