Aki, the daughter of jewellery makers, was born in Paris and raised in Tokyo. After spending a year in the US, she returned to France at the age of 18 to study interior architecture and product design at École Camondo. Arnaud is from the north of France and was interested in art from his childhood. He moved to Belgium to study arts and humanities at Saint-Luc Tournai and then contemporary art at La Cambre, before settling in Paris and meeting Aki at École Camondo.
Since founding Aki+Arnaud Cooren studio in 1999, the design duo has worked on interior, product and furniture design projects as well as scenography for brands such as Shiseido, Artemide, L’Oréal, Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, Yamagiwa, Saint Louis, Boffi Bains, Cartier and Vertigo Bird. They also create special pieces for private customers and collaborate with architects on interior design projects.
Aki and Arnaud are inspired by the natural antagonisms and gentle tensions between objects and their surrounding contexts. With each piece handcrafted at their workshop in Paris, Aki and Arnaud develop empirical work that questions reality. The pair sees design as a continuous act of sharing among people and users, forming ideas in harmony with industrial, temporal and economic contexts.
The duo has displayed in exhibitions at institutions including Palais de Tokyo, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design, Shanghai Museum of Glass, Harbourfront Centre, Museo Poldi Pezzoli and Märkisches Museum, as well as at various fairs and biennales around the world, such as Design Miami, TEFAF, Homo Faber and Paris Design Week. Their artworks are held in collections including Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC) and Fonds d’art contemporain – Paris Collections.
Aki+Arnaud Cooren won a Frame Award in 2004 and a Villa Medici residency grant in 2007, spending several months in Denmark researching natural and artificial light. They were awarded a Liliane Bettencourt Prize in 2017 for their Tiss-Tiss chair, made with craftsman David de Gourcuff, as well as French Design 100 Awards in 2022 and 2024. In 2025, they received the Créateurs Design Award in the category of Best Limited Series and Bespoke Design for their Ishigaki Floor Lamp Coral.
