Thoughtful Sustainable Design: France and Vietnam in Dialogue for Tomorrow

kobi lighting studio was honoured to participate in Designing Tomorrow: Perspectives from France and Vietnam, a dialogue on the future of design held in Ho Chi Minh City as part of the Year of Innovation 2025. Organised by the Institut français du Vietnam, the event invited architects, designers, educators and cultural actors to reflect together on how design can address today’s challenges and shape tomorrow’s societies.

For Kobi, it was an opportunity to listen, reflect, and reaffirm our commitment to a more thoughtful and sustainable design culture.

Our Vision: Lighting as a Cultural Gesture

We see light as a gesture, a way of caring for space, people, and the invisible bonds between them. thoughtful sustainable design means creating lighting that responds with precision to human needs while preserving environmental and cultural integrity.

From workspaces to cultural venues, we root our practice in humility and purpose. Good lighting reveals. It protects the night, invites dialogue and fosters safety and belonging. But, above all, it should be meaningful.

This event offered a shared platform to explore these ideas in an international, cross-cultural setting. The voices around the table brought diverse practices and philosophies yet converged around a common desire: to design with aesthetic intent, and ethical clarity.

Why We Took Part

Vietnam is a country in transformation: socially, economically, and spatially. As a French agency rooted in Southeast Asia, we feel both privileged to take part in the conversations shaping the region’s future.

Our participation in Designing Tomorrow was driven by three convictions:

• That design must serve inclusion in access, in expression, meaning, and emotion.
• That sustainability is a responsibility, not a marketing term. It begins with restraint, respect, and relevance.
• That dialogue across cultures is essential to regenerate design practices and escape the repetition of imported models.

This is what we wished to share: a vision of lighting as design that thinks before it draws and listens before it illuminates.

 Night of Ideas, Memory and Transmission

One of the most moving moments of the evening came with the intervention of Othello Khánh, who honoured the visionary designer Quasar Khánh. His words were not only a tribute, but a reminder that design can be poetic, political, and deeply human.

We were also touched by the depth of reflections around education, nature, and the need for design to engage with the social fabric of communities. These conversations resonate deeply with our own work, and inspire us to continue designing with intention.

Looking Ahead with Hope

We thank the Institut français, the French Embassy in Vietnam, and ELLE Decoration Vietnam for their trust and for curating such an enriching exchange. Special gratitude to Emmanuelle Charrier, Emmanuelle Pavillon-Grosser, Guillian Graves, and the many contributors who lent their presence and insight.

We leave this moment with renewed energy and a quiet certainty: Thoughtful sustainable design is about how we build and also about how we live, and how we choose to care for the world we share.

Let this be not an end, but a beginning.