Paris Design Week runs from 10-19 September 2026, and to mark the occasion Garnier & Linker is branching into outdoor lighting for the very first time.
The French lighting brand’s new collection, ‘Aurora’, is built on a simple premise: rather than inventing a new design language for outdoor use, it extends Garnier & Linker's existing universe – one that founders Guillaume Garnier and Florent Linker say draws from ‘the decorative arts and contemporary sculpture’.
'Thala', part of the outdoor 'Aurora' collection
'Nezu'
‘Through the various – often technical – research projects we conducted to develop this outdoor collection, we thought it would be interesting to adapt some of our current models. To bring the indoors outdoors, so to speak,’ they elaborate.
'Aurora' reinterprets existing designs – including ‘Nezu’, ‘Kora’, ‘Teree’ and ‘Thea’ – through the introduction of a new material. Where the brand’s indoor pieces have tended towards bronze or plaster, ‘Aurora’ uses cast aluminium. ‘Beyond its qualities, which are well-suited to outdoor use, we also wanted to focus on its aesthetic appeal – which is both raw and refined,’ the founders explain.
'Aura'
'Cronos'
Developed at Les Granges, the founders’ studio near the Forest of Fontainebleau just south-east of Paris, ‘Aurora’ still feels sculptural – a hallmark of the brand – but leans slightly more architectural and industrial.
The design process stayed true to the studio's usual hybrid method – ‘moving back and forth between the studio and the workshop, and between drawing and sculpting or modelling’ – but this time layered with demands specific to the outdoors, including electrical testing and the development of a proprietary, compact power source. Interestingly, the attention to materials, texture and process developed for outdoor durability has now found its way back indoors, too – ‘thus bringing us full circle’, say Garnier and Linker.
'Retina'
The pair describe ‘Aurora’, which, they tease, is only the first chapter of a larger outdoor lighting line, as a challenge to the codes of the category. ‘We feel that the conventions are set in stone, both in terms of form and the materials used, and that the design vocabulary is consequently limited,’ they say. The new collection explores ‘how the differences between interior and exterior can sometimes be challenged to achieve greater fluidity’.