Artist: Aki+Arnaud Cooren

Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York presents a display of works by Aki+Arnaud Cooren, the multidisciplinary design studio known for serene, dreamy, creations that evoke poignant and harmonious confluences with the natural world. The exhibition features new pieces that add to the duo’s acclaimed Ishigaki Lamp series, which won a Créateurs Design Award in 2025 and is inspired by freediving experiences off the coast of Ishigaki island, southern Japan.

Through their minimalist Japanese-French aesthetic, Aki+Arnaud Cooren seek to integrate subtle references to nature into their designs of interiors and objects. Aki grew up in Tokyo and studied interior and product design at the Ècole Camondo in Paris, where she met Arnaud, a native of northern France, who had studied contemporary art in Belgium before moving to Paris.

Meticulously hand-crafted in the designers’ Paris workshop, the Ishigaki Lamps combine the natural elegance of bamboo with the harshness of metal and the fragile poetry of fabric. The lighting sculptures comprise a metal and carbon base supporting a bamboo stem with a delicate linen lampshade. Each is crafted in a different colour, from amber and red coral to green rust and moss copper, while each unique bamboo stem also has its own particularity, adding a touch of individuality to every piece.

Each lamp projects light upward from a bulb in its base. As the light passes through the lampshade’s layers of linen, it creates a mesmerising shadow on the ceiling, reminiscent of sunlight on the ocean’s surface as viewed from many meters underwater. The dappled combination of colour and material produces an abstract intersection of fabric, liquid, and light, while the lamp’s verticality – becoming more solid towards its coral-inspired base – symbolises the pressure of the ocean’s depths.

Since opening their design studio in 1999, Aki+Arnaud Cooren have worked on projects for brands such as Shiseido, Artemide, L’Oréal, Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, Yamagiwa, Saint Louis, Boffi Bains, Cartier and Vertigo Bird. Carpenters Workshop Gallery has been working with Aki+Arnaud Cooren since 2019, starting with their Tiss-Tiss collection, which fuses notions of traditional handwoven textiles with aluminium in a minimalist design aesthetic. Now showcasing the latest additions to Ishigaki Lamps, this new exhibition celebrates the evolution of one of the designers’ most striking current contributions to contemporary design.