Akasaki & Vanhuyse made an elegant lamp with Tokyo’s retired train components
Created with a refined and sophisticated design, you could never guess that the WA lamp was made with recycled parts. With this product, the international studio is defining new aesthetic possibilities for sustainable design.
Upcycled designs are often poorly judged by the market, associated with random scraps pulled together, referencing vintage aesthetics, or simply feeling like low-quality items. But what if upcycled design could feel contemporary and luxurious? The WA lamp is a limited edition lighting design made from an unexpected source: retired strap handles from Tokyo’s Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line 8500 series trains. When these trains were decommissioned in 2023, approximately 1400 resin rings, the handles passengers gripped in their daily commutes, were left without use until they were collected and transformed into 150 lamps by design studio Akasaki & Vanhuyse.
Akasaki & Vanhuyse is a studio based in Shoreditch, London, founded in 2022 by Japanese architect Kenta Akasaki and French designer Astrid Vanhuyse. This partnership merges Eastern and Western sensibilities, with a focus on purpose-driven and long-lasting design objects. They work on a variety of different projects, including product, tech, furniture, space, curation, and research. Their multidisciplinary approach can be seen in the WA lamp, which, on a cultural level, extends beyond traditional lighting design.
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The lampshade is constructed by stacking 9 strap handles with small gaps between them, creating a diffused glow. Before assembly, each ring is sandblasted to achieve a matte finish. However, the designers have chosen to maintain surface marks due to years of use, like scratches, dents, and weathering, intentionally preserving them to show the history of the object’s materials. Mirrored stainless steel legs hold the rings together with screws, as the whole product is designed with disassembly and recycling in mind.
The Den-en-toshi line (Garden City Line) is one of Tokyo’s most important railways, serving a 31.5 kilometre route. The 8500 series trains have operated the path for years, before recently being replaced with newer models. For Tokyo residents, owning a lamp made from their local train line creates a personal connection to the object, tied to urban memories and countless daily journeys. The use of the strap handles also ties the product to a certain time period and limits its production to a set number of pieces, making the design even more special by giving it a contextual history that a new product could never possess.
The lamp also embodies the essence of the studio’s duality, blending Japanese aesthetic principles with European minimalism. The intentional preservation of wear marks reflects wabi-sabi, an aesthetic and philosophy that celebrates the beauty of imperfection and incompleteness, while the clean lines and functional structure appeal to European design.
The WA lamp shows that sustainable design does not require compromise: a lamp made from recycled train parts is not a gimmicky sculpture, it is genuinely beautiful, well-made, and built to last. The product invites a daily contemplation of where our objects come from and where they might go, thinking of the thousands of hands that have touched the handles that create the lamp.
The collaboration between Akasaki & Vanhuyse, a major Japanese corporation, and local manufacturing shows how circular economy principles can work across scales. It suggests just how much beauty could be created by looking at what we already have a bit differently, how many design solutions already exist in the world waiting for someone to see their potential.
