Aki+Arnaud Cooren

Eyes on Talents member, Aki+Arnaud Cooren, has just been announced as one of the five finalists for the Créateurs Design Awards 2025 in the Best Limited Series and Bespoke Design category. Their nominated piece, the Ishigaki Floor Lamp Coral, combines the harshness of metal with the fragile poetry of fabric, handcrafted one by one by the duo in their Paris workshop. Inspired by Arnaud's freediving experiences off the island of Ishigaki in southern Japan, the lamp’s light is projected upwards through the lampshade, producing a mesmerising shadow on the ceiling, representative of the small circle of sunlight on the ocean's surface, seen several metres underwater. The verticality of the lamp illustrates the increased pressure of the ocean’s depths, as it becomes increasingly solid towards its coral-inspired metal base.
Aki+Arnaud Cooren design studio, founded in 1999, seeks to integrate subtle references to nature into the interiors and everyday objects it creates, drawing on its minimalist Franco-Japanese aesthetic. They build constantly evolving harmonies, like nature, leading the public to gradually immerse themselves in the present moment.