Bringing 250 people together to auction off eight handcrafted puppies for charity, the Puppy Love Project, a collaboration between Luminaire and Christie's, premiered in the heart of the Design District during Art Basel Miami 2006. It successfully raised a combined $400,000 for the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center's molecular oncology program, which funds cancer research. Auction bids for each of the puppies started at $5,000."Every December since 2003, Miami hosts one of the world's most important art fairs, Art Basel," explained Nargis Kassamali, owner of Luminaire. "Numerous off-site events take place during the course of it. This year, we had a strong obsession to do something different, something more meaningful, contributing to humanity," she added.
What transpired is that designer Eero Aarnio was contacted by Luminaire to create several standard, white-colored, three-dimensional plastic puppies. Once finished, these puppies were shipped-off to 36 world-renowned architects, artists, and designers to be transformed into works of art. A Christie's auctioneer ultimately auctioned the top eight of the 36 originals, while the other pups just sat, stayed, and were admired by guests.
The winners included Giulio Cappellini's Puppy (a blue puppy with metallic silver dots), Erwan & Ronan Bouroullee's The Dog with Lighting Bone (a white puppy holding a white light in its mouth), Marcel Wanders' Courage (a goldish-white dog with a big bell chained to its neck), Fernando & Humberto Campana's Banzé (a dog with a rattan-coated exterior), Herzog & De Meuron's Puppy & House (a white puppy hiding within a yellow doghouse), Piero Lissoni's P Flip (a dog covered in computer chips from head to toe), Ingo Maurer's Woofy (a white dog with a collar composed of holiday lighting), and Konstantin Grcic's Nose-Jive-Three-Sixty (a white puppy spinning upside-down on his ball).
With cocktails beginning at 6:30 PM and the dinner and live auction following immediately thereafter, all guests who wanted in on this event had to first be invited and pay $200 a ticket. Tables featured small white tulip centerpieces and industrial-looking place settings with basic silverware and square-shaped gray chargers. Above metallic vine-wrapped chandeliers provided a nice glow and a great conversation piece. Everyone could view both the slide show projecting breast cancer information onto the wall and the simple black auction stage, which was set in front of a white wall that had the words "puppy love" on it in red along with red outlines of Aarnio's pups.
Catered by Savoir Faire, the food served throughout the night included duck summer rolls with asparagus and shiitake mushrooms to start, an entree of Tandoori rack of lamb with spicy mango chutney with rice balls and glazed baby carrots, and passion fruit cheese cake to top it all off. Veuve Clicquot, responsible for providing the liquor at the event, served four kinds of drinks—Terrazas Reserve Malbec, Newton Red Label Chardonnay, Hibiscus tea, and Sumatra regular or decaf coffee.
—Albert del Toral
P Flip, an auction-clinching high-tech puppy, was the creation of Piero Lissoni.
This 28-seat table, located right next to one of two puppy line-ups, featured small white floral centerpieces, lavish chandeliers, fancy tableware, and a great view of the entire room.
Thirty-six plastic puppies, each designed by a different artist, competed against each other in an auction for cancer research.
Konstantin Grcic's Nose-Jive-Three-Sixty, one of the eight puppies selected for the auction, featured a puppy having some upside-down fun, playing with his ball.
Before dinner, butlers were passing around hors d'oeuvres like the one pictured here.
Marcel Wanders' Courage, another of the selected puppies, had a gold bell chained to his neck and a person's face patched in gold on his white skin.
This stage-fronting table featured a white tulip centerpiece, a brownish chandelier, crystal ware, and enough room to sit eight people comfortably.
This dog that was covered head-to-toe in various-colored flowers was not one of the pups selected for auction.
The chandeliers hovering over the tables were composed of a single bright bulb wrapped in a brown vine.
