Paul Marantz, a prominent architectural lighting designer who illuminated disco floors and skylines, libraries and chic hotels, train stations and concert halls, museums and embassies, died in his house in Manhattan on 26 May. He was 87.
The cause of death was complications of a stroke, said his wife, Jane Marantz.
Mr. Marantz, who was known as the Prince of Darkness by Industry Wags, threw a wide network.
His Projects, Sometimes Done in Concert with his business partners, Charles Stone and the Tony Award-Winning Lightning Designer Jules Fisher, Included New Buildings-The Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London (1995), The Getty Center in Fame of Fame (1997), The Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar (2008), The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (2012) – As well as many venerable old structures.
For example, Mr Marantz was involved in the renovations of Carnegie Hall (1987), Grand Central Terminal (1998), The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library (1998) and David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center (2022). He also did the lighting for New York Nightclubs such as Studio 54 (1977) and The Palladium (1985), and for the Times Square Ball in the middle of the New Year’s Eve count in Manhattan (1999).
When his company, Fisher Marantz (now Fisher Marantz Stone), was involved in 1988 to develop guidelines for the brightness levels of enlightened signs around West 42nd Street, when new office towers went into the area, Mr. Marantz came up with the idea of the “Luts ”(or Light Unit Times Square) Meter -A reflex camera with one lenses with a specially modified Zoomlens-to measure compliance. And he and his partners were the Megawatt wizards who helped to realize in 2002 Light tributeThe 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan with two luminous columns built on 88 search lights. (Mr. Marantz’s company remains involved in the annual commemoration.)
“He did not invent the field of architectural lighting, but he had enough presence in New York that people said:” Get me Paul Marantz, “said Tyler Donaldson, a retired architect and project manager who worked with Mr. Marantz on the renovations of Carnegie Hall and the Park Avenue Armory, in an interview.
“Architects loved to work with him because he understood that we wanted the light, not only to be functional, but also to shape a space and make it more beautiful,” Mr Donaldson continued. “He also knew that sometimes a space had to be lit in a way that made it more dramatic or inviting. Enlightenment was spotty without him.”
But Mr. Marantz, who won prizes from the American Institute of Architects, the Illuminating Engineering Society and the International Association of Lighting Designers, was also very tailored to the role – and power – of the absence of light. One of his favorite books, said his son Nicholas in an interview, was “in Praise of Shadows” (1933), by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, a treatise on Japanese aesthetics that Mr. Marantz considered “The basic text of the lighting designer.”
“Paul would pause with a soft smile, point up a finger and exclaim,” Consider dark! ” Stone. “That idea is rooted in the theatrical and architectural lighting that was the heart of his philosophy about lighting.”
In 1977, when Ian Schager, now largely known as a hotelier, was looking for someone to make the lighting for a new nightclub he created with his business partner, Steve RubellOn West 54th Street in Manhattan: “We went to all the usual suspects,” said Mr. Schager in an interview. Then Mr. Marantz came by to view the site.
“I saw this professoral -looking man; he had a beard and a big jacket and glasses,” said the Lord Schager. “I didn’t know if he would be interested.”
But it was Mr. Marantz, Mr Scheerker said, who came up with the idea of treating the space – the future studio 54 – as the theater it once was, and created an appropriate lighting design: dynamic, lively and very dramatic.
The mix of neon, moving lights, flashy lights and light bars was a deviation from the conventional after-dark aesthetics. “The direction that Studio took was all the idea of Paul,” said Mr. Schager, who later hired Mr. Marantz to work on various hotels and houses.
“Enlightenment is such an essential discipline,” said Mr. Schager. “It’s hard to find people with the architecture and the design that Paul had. He opened my consciousness and my feeling of possibilities.”
However, Mr. Marantz did not become a habit in Studio 54. “We were not a nightclub people,” said Mrs. Marantz, who recognized a visit or two. “Paul went in, did the work and left the back door.”
Paul Murat Marantz was born on April 27, 1938 in Elizabeth, NJ, and grew up in Union and Maplewood, NJ He was the eldest of three children of Samuel Marantz, a lawyer and Mildred (Goldstein) Marantz, a former teacher who managed the household.
Paul became interested in the lighting design at the age of 10, when he attended a Marionette workshop. Inspired, he built a model theater. During high school he ran lights for dance recitals in a local Jewish community center.
At Oberlin College, in Ohio, he studied architectural and art history and was active in the theater department. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1959, he graduated from the Western Reserve University and Brooklyn College case, but left without an advanced degree.
He worked for a New York lighting manufacturer in the mid-sixties and designs small lighting fixtures for window screens when he was Mr. Fisher met, a fellow lighting designer who worked at low-budget shows in off -roadway theaters.
“I would go to Paul for lighting solutions, or to ask what lights he had or which he could design,” said Mr. Fisher in an interview. “And in 1971 I asked:” Would you like to be partners? ‘Because we had similar interests and attitudes. And that was a good way to start. ‘
“Paul was a genius in solving light problems,” Tod WilliamsSaid an architect who often collaborated with Mr. Marantz, in an interview.
In the Barnes Foundation building, designed by Mr. Williams’ company, Tod Williams + Billie Tsien, some windows were initially covered to protect art. But Mr. Marantz found out how he could naturally bring in light while protecting the art by using controls on the roof that follow the position of the sun. “His thinking was analog,” said Mr. Williams. “But he used digital tools.”
Analogue? Digital? Mr. Marantz sometimes did what was obvious. A long ago, when the family lived in a house in New Jersey, designed by Gustav Stickley, said Mrs. Marantz in an interview, he called a lamp with art and Crafts style for the dining room with a few pieces of wood that he had stabbed in his home workshop. He made the shadow of the pages and binding of a spiral notebook.
In addition to Mrs. Marantz, with whom he married in 1977, and their son, Nicholas, Mr. Marantz is survived by another son, Joshua, of an earlier marriage, with Marsha Heller, who ended in divorce; Four grandchildren; A brother, Robert; And a sister, Ellen Florin.
The families of Schoenmakers often go barefoot. Years ago, when the daughter of a family friend returned after being careful by Nicholas Marantz: “She told her parents:” I thought he was in the lighting business. I couldn’t find a good place to read, “Mrs. Marantz remembered.
She added: “In the end we had beautiful light. But it took a while, because it was so important for Paul.”
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