Carpenters Workshop Gallery Paris presents Summer by Design, a showcase of historical and contemporary works united by the warm, bright, joyful aesthetics associated with this time of year. Spread across two floors, this display marks the season with approximately 50 works of art and design encompassing mediums ranging from lighting, ceramics and textiles to woodwork, lighting and video.

The exhibition recognises artists and designers who tell powerful stories through functional sculptures, such as Eric Schmitt, known for large-scale artworks that leave a monumental impact on the viewer. Supported on three immense columns, the piece Table Babylone achieves such an effect, referencing the splendour of the lost ancient city. Abandoning ornamentation, the work references the cultural magnitude of the Babylonian empire, rather than merely the decorative spectacle of its hanging gardens.

Designers in this show also take pioneering, cutting-edge approaches to materiality. DC2002 Coffee Table by Vincenzo de Cotiis is made from black granite but the designer chooses not to present the material highly polished, as is traditional. Instead, he uses the natural texture of the stone to distort light refracting from its surface. The combination of colour and texture disrupts a viewer’s perspective, rendering the object an abstract silhouette, only broken up by the mineral variations of the stone.

Visitors are also invited to consider innovations in colour, through designers such as Wonmin Park. His work Haze Round Chandelier Purple is part of an ongoing series that explores the visual effect of coloured resin. The designer creates blocks of the material through a unique casting process that leaves them somewhere in between opaqueness and translucence. The work carries within it a dissymmetry of form hidden from sight, giving the impression that it gradually reveals itself before the viewer’s eyes.

With a wide range of other outstanding contributions to the world of collectible design, this exhibition celebrates the summer by embracing principles of rest, light and vibrancy. Through bold experimentation and refined craftsmanship, the works show modern and contemporary design to be markers of growth and evolution as the seasons and the years progress.