Drawing on nature, collaboration and context, this Japanese-French partnership

DESIGN DUO AKI and Arnaud Cooren met at design school in Paris. Aki, born in Paris but brought up in Tokyo, is the daughter of master jewellery makers. After a year in the United States, she came to Paris to study interior and product design at the École Camondo. There she met Arnaud, from northern France, who had initially trained in contemporary art in Belgium. Together, since founding their studio in 1999, they have forged a distinctive approach to design – understated, thought-provoking, perfectionist, responsive to nature and driven by the desire to introduce an element of surprise into design.