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Vaishnavi Nayel Talawadekar is an internationally published architecture, design and art journalist.

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Vaishnavi works out of a sunny studio called Mangomonk where she writes for publications big and small.

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Architectural Digest •

Inside a Thane restaurant designed to feel like a lived-in home

Comfort, however, doesn't always play nicely with a restaurant's daily grind, and striking that balance turned out to be one of the project's steeper climbs. Every soft, generous piece of furniture also had to survive a dinner rush. “Inviting and indestructible aren't always on speaking terms,” Wagh jokes, “but we needed both.” The bigger puzzle, though, was the shape of the site itself: a long, featureless rectangle with all the architectural charm of a train corridor. Run straight through, it...
Elle Decor •

[Print] Flock in Fresco: Mumbai Home by MuseLAB

Most people count sheep when they’re trying to fall asleep. Priyanka Thaker of House of Beserk counts them when she’s trying not to. Not too many moons ago, while painting the ceiling of an apartment designed by Mumbai-based studio MuseLAB, the Ahmedabad-based multidisciplinary art practitioner began slipping tiny, secret sheep into the composition — her own woolly pressure valve. “Every time someone walked in and asked a question about this motif or that, she’d get really agitated,” says Huzefa Rangwala, one half of the studio. “And out would come another sheep.” To be fair, painting the underside of a structural slab while answering a running commentary from the room below is enough to make anyone see sheep — although Huzefa and the firm’s other half, Jasem Pirani, evidently, had their own flock of challenges to contend with. The apartment in question, situated in Mumbai and measuring 4,500 square feet, began life rather differently. Originally a linear five-bedroom home, its elongated plan was heavy on corridors and light on delight. The brief was radical: pare it down to a generous two-bedroom residence—with a lounge, living and dining areas, a bar and a kitchen — while ensuring the space felt anything but pared back. “It was a long, stretched-out layout,” recalls Huzefa. “The question was: how do you make the in-between spaces exciting rather than merely functional?”
Elle Decor •

[Print] Once Upon a Childhood: My Home in Bengaluru

As a child growing up in London, my parents, brother and I would slip away on little trips during the summers. Once it was to the Cotswolds, another time to Scotland and the Lake District. A third, to the mesmeric coastline of Cornwall. And each time, unfailingly, we’d stay in a little bed-and-breakfast, with cobblestone walls, creaky floors, and, as ever, a friendly face to welcome us inside and see us off in the morning. They were never grand — often a little lopsided, always a little quirky — but endlessly warm. When we moved to Bengaluru in 2003, those cheerful little B&Bs quietly became my earliest memories of architecture: spaces full of character, small imperfect details, and the comforting sense that a home should feel lived in rather than perfectly put together.
Architectural Digest •

Inside a 150-year-old Dalhousie resort once favoured by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose

Sometime in the summer of 1937, following his release from British house arrest, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose retreated to the picturesque mountain town of Dalhousie to recuperate from ill health and tuberculosis. It was here, amidst the mist-laden peaks of the Dhauladhar hills, that Bose sought sanctuary for six months, meditating in seclusion and, as legend has it, seeking healing in the medicinal properties of the spring water at Subhash Baoli. Much about Bose's stay in Dalhousie remains shroud...
Elle Decor •

In Mumbai, MuseLAB creates an home with its own colour-story

It was a question he and Jasem would soon set out to answer. Convincing the homeowners to embrace that proposition, however, required its own measure of persuasion. The couple — finance professionals who discovered the studio via Instagram — approached the process with the analytical clarity one might expect from their line of work. “He took a very thoughtful approach, often stopping to weigh every possibility,” Huzefa laughs. “She was naturally inclined towards fresh perspectives and unconventi...
Elle Decor •

Welcome to My Vintage Home in Bengaluru

As a child growing up in London, my parents, brother and I would slip away on little trips during the summers. Once it was to the Cotswolds, another time to Scotland and the Lake District. A third, to the mesmeric coastline of Cornwall. And each time, unfailingly, we’d stay in a little bed-and-breakfast, with cobblestone walls, creaky floors, and, as ever, a friendly face to welcome us inside and see us off in the morning. They were never grand — often a little lopsided, always a little quirky —...
Architectural Digest •

AD Small Spaces: Inside the prettiest French cottagecore-inspired Mumbai apartment

Artist Rudranee Chiman's hand-painted details deserve their own round of applause. Appearing on the crockery unit, the mandir shutters, the master wardrobe, and around the guest room mirror, they give Rêverie the feeling of a storybook that someone has very lovingly illustrated, cover to cover. Every room then picks up the thread. The canopied master bedroom, dressed in Borastepeter wallpaper and billowing fabric, is the sort of space that makes you want to read in bed until further notice. The...
The Local Project •

Treetop by Studio Kennon

This relationship to the site is expressed through two distinct architectural identities. From the street, the house appears restrained and protective, with a largely solid concrete facade that prioritises privacy. In contrast, the park-facing elevation opens dramatically towards the canopy. A sweeping curved wall of glazing captures views through the trees, while vertical timber louvres filter light and visually echo the surrounding trunks. Large sliding panels disappear entirely into concealed...
Architectural Digest •

This Mumbai production studio is designed like a film that slowly reveals itself

More often than not, when it comes to creating a space, architects Aashna Shah and Ruchir Jain of Mumbai-based RAD co + lab like to resort to a bit of make-believe. “We like to imagine first and design second,” says Shah. For one home, that story might unfold in a sun-dappled English garden. For another, it could begin with a postcard from Japan and end somewhere delightfully wabi-sabi. So when the duo were commissioned to design the office of a leading Mumbai production house in the suburb of S...
Architectural Digest •

Housed in a 70-year-old building, this Puducherry boutique feels almost monastic

Task architect Deepak Jawahar and designer Justine De Penning of Chennai-based The Architecture Story to conjure a space, and chances are, they’ll begin, crucially, by taking things away. Not stripping it bare necessarily, but editing—gently, patiently—until what remains feels almost inevitable. That approach finds its perfect counterpart in fashion designer Naushad Ali’s new boutique in Puducherry, housed within a 70-year-old building in White Town, where, as De Penning explains, the intention...
The Local Project •

Nacho Polo and Robert Onuska’s Tribeca Residence by Herzog & de Meuron and StudioTwentySeven

Designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as a “villa in the sky”, the architecture provided a rigorous framework. Instead of disrupting it, Polo and Onuska leaned into its clarity. “We chose to work in dialogue with it, creating a living composition where architecture, collectible design and contemporary art continuously interact,” Onuska says. This sensibility is immediately evident upon entry, where the foyer establishes a gallery-like tone: measured, deliberate and immersive.
Light pla...
Architectural Digest •

This 17th-floor Chennai apartment measures space in everyday moments

High above Chennai, on the 17th floor of a tower that gathers both heat and horizon into its embrace, a Sunita Yogesh Studio apartment looks out over a city that never quite settles and, beyond it, a strip of sea that appears and disappears with the light. Inside, however, there is none of that restlessness. The mood is composed, considered, hushed—less about effect than about the art of living well. The home, in a way, mirrors its owners: a couple in their thirties, both in demanding IT careers...
Architectural Digest •

This architect’s Chennai studio is a home disguised as an office

Set on a bustling street in Chennai, the studio occupies a 1980s building that once functioned as a family home. The owners still live upstairs; life continues above in its original domestic register, while the ground floor has passed through years of commercial tenants, each leaving behind their own alterations. Yet beneath those layers, Menon found something intact—a quiet, unshowy integrity. The mosaic floors were what first caught her. Different in every room, slightly irregular, distinctly...
Architectural Digest •

This architect couple gave their parents' 40-year-old Chennai home a delightful upgrade

Pablo Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." Husband-and-wife architect duo Kavin Sundar and Preethi Baskaran of Chennai studio Two Straight Lines never had that problem, because to Kavin’s parents, Sundar and Raji, their son and daughter-in-law have always been creative first and grown-ups second. So when the couple proposed transforming the underused terrace of the family’s 40-year-old Chennai home into a light-filled extension fo...
Architectural Digest •

This Rajkot cafe is built around traditional courtyards and teracotta

The idea of stepping out rarely comes with the promise of slowing down—especially in bistros and brasseries, where even leisure tends to feel scheduled. You walk in, pick a table, scan the room like you’ve done this before, and instinctively edit yourself to match whatever version of you the space seems to prefer. But every so often, you stumble into a place that resolutely refuses the whole act. Exhibit A: Café Beats.A stacked terracotta matka partition marks the first pause inside Café Beats,...
Architectural Digest •

This jewellery store in Tamil Nadu's Pollachi feels more like an heirloom than a showroom

Architect Sowmya Kumar likes to see the glass half full. The trouble is, when it comes to her work, the founder of Coimbatore-based OWM Architecture can never quite resist filling it right to the brim. She slipped into this habit, almost irreverently, while designing Tvishi, a jewellery store in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, repeatedly revisiting a scheme her client had already enthusiastically green-lit and returning with iteration after iteration—each more dazzling than the last. "There came a point w...
Architectural Digest •

Inside a multi-pavilion Surat home inspired by a grandson’s memory

Distil Surat designer Rahul Dholakia's memories of his grandmother down to their essence, and one scene remains: a mud chullah crackling in the courtyard of their ancestral home, bajra na rotla rising over the flame, and a young boy sitting close enough to carry the smell of smoke with him for years to come. The house itself wasn't remarkable. The memories it contained were. Dholakia grew up in a sprawling Gujarati family that now numbers more than 70 members. Business eventually took him around...
Architectural Digest •

This house in Kerala’s Idukki hills practically disappears into the landscape

More often than not, before he begins designing spaces in real life, architect Prabhul Mathew of Kottayam-based Mindspark Architects likes to create them in his head. Sometimes, these structures are large. Other times, small. Some have gabled roofs. Some, flat ones. But almost all of them, in one way or another, begin on reassuringly flat terrain. For Mathew, however, architecture in real life rarely begins with a predetermined idea of form. Instead, the terrain, climate, vegetation, light, and wind gradually shape the building over time. “The site decides what it needs,” says the architect, who worked alongside team member Shahana Salahudeen.
Architectural Digest •

The Homeowners' Favorite Room in This Napa House Is Actually Outside

For designer Rachel Vineberg Jones and her husband, Eric Jones, their latest chapter was one they hadn’t seen coming. It began with a prolonged hospital stay for their newborn son and continued with the purchase of a 3,000-square-foot home in Napa. “I remember looking around and saying to Eric, ‘There's something about this place—I think it's going to become important to us,’” says the founder of San Francisco–based design studio Vine Projects. At the time, the property offered more promise than...
Architectural Digest India •

A 5,000-square-foot Kanpur farmhouse that channels the energy of a Greek island

There is, throughout the home, a distinct sense that nobody was terribly interested in behaving formally. Corridors widen unexpectedly into conversational pockets; sit-outs appear precisely where one might wish to abandon all productivity with a cup of tea; and nearly every room seems engineered to encourage the art of doing absolutely nothing for slightly longer than intended. “The architecture understands, perhaps wisely, that farmhouses are rarely used according to plan,” says Namrata Somani,...
The Local Project •

Rockpool House by Architecture Saville Isaacs and Madeleine Wood

Located in one of Avoca Beach’s most coveted pockets, the six-bedroom dwelling responds directly to its setting between bushland and ocean. About 90 minutes north of Sydney, the Central Coast enclave is known for its laid-back atmosphere and strong sense of community – qualities that shaped the home’s tone as much as its architecture. The project also carries personal significance for the owners, whose longstanding connection to the area informed the brief and inspired the home’s name, a referen...
Architectural Digest India •

This Indian designer turned homesickness into Portland’s warmest textile store

When the time finally came to move into a dedicated studio, Kalia knew she didn’t want a polished commercial showroom stripped of personality. After an uninspiring search through generic retail spaces, she instead bought a small house tucked into a quiet Portland street. “The moment I opened the front door, it just felt right,” she recalls. “I could instantly picture how every space would come together.” That warmth still defines the studio today. Original wood flooring was refinished rather tha...
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Architectural Digest •

Inside a coastal Karnataka bungalow inspired by childhood memory

As sometimes happens when inspiration strikes, Salian found himself guided by flashes of memory, or as he puts it, “a faint, sensorial fragment from childhood. I remember stepping into a Mangalore tile factory, now long vanished, and being enveloped by its vastness. A double-height roof stretched overhead, its terracotta tiles resting on an exposed lattice of wooden trusses. The air was thick with the scent of sun-baked clay and ash. Light filtered in from high openings, casting long shadows acr...
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Diipa Büller-Khosla's canal house in Amsterdam is a postcard from 1614

Even from 6,000 kilometres away, Diipa Büller-Khosla’s energy is palpable through the screen. It’s morning where she is, and she and her husband and business partner, Dutch former diplomat, Oleg Büller-Khosla (the couple legally adopted each other's last names when they married in 2018) are perched in the kitchen of their Amsterdam home, in the company of their pet pooches, Kubii and Bimbo.

By their own admission, it’s a scene that just a few years ago, was a figment of their imagination. “We'd
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Ishaan Khatter’s Mumbai apartment is a sunset sanctuary

When he isn't busy filming or promoting or air-dashing off to exotic locales, Ishaan Khatter likes to appreciate the little things in life. “On Sunday mornings, when time permits, I slip off for a bike ride. In the evenings, I like to watch the sunset with some music and coffee,” says the actor, who was last seen in supernatural comedy Phone Bhoot, alongside Katrina Kaif and Siddhant Chaturvedi. So when he moved in a three-bedroom apartment along the Bandra sea face, naturally, his first priorit
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Actor Aahana Kumra’s Mumbai apartment is a pretty-in-pink princess pad

In a building full of identical brown doors, Aahana Kumra's entrance is the only non-brown curiosity. "I absolutely love pink. It's my all-time favourite colour—that's why it's right at the front," she laughs, holding open the candyfloss-coloured opuscule as she ushers me inside. For Kumra, the home is a manifestation twenty years in the making, and one that nods equally to her Lucknowi roots and her life in Mumbai. "There are whiffs of Kashmir, London and Delhi too. It's a collection of all my
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Actor Aparshakti Khurana’s Mumbai home displays drama in the details

Even before they had finalised their house, or decided who would design it, actor Aparshakti Khurana and his wife, events entrepreneur Aakriti Ahuja, had a chandelier picked out and stowed away in storage. "I had spotted it some years ago in Delhi and just knew I had to buy it," laughs Aakriti, and Aparshakti chimes in, "We had no idea what our future house would look like. Nothing was set in stone, except this big, blue bhaisahab." The bhaisahab in question now occupies a corner of their living
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Singer Armaan Malik’s Mumbai home is halfway between London and Los Angeles

At 10 AM on a Sunday, the last thing you'd expect is for Armaan Malik to be crisping the edges of a frittata. And yet, that's exactly the sight that greets me as I step into his kitchen, a California-cool bolthole with a London-esque edge. "I love making breakfast and treating myself to a good spread," he says, drizzling butter on bruschettas. Dressed in a casual button-up and chinos, he looks like a laid-back version of his on-screen alter ego, who, as fans of The Voice (on which Armaan appears
Architectural Digest •

AD Visits: Actors Aditya Seal and Anushka Ranjan’s newlywed nest is a storybook come to life

At the door of actors (and newlyweds) Aditya Seal and Anushka Ranjan Seal's new Mumbai duplex, the nameplate is conspicuous by its absence. What is not is the cheery (LED) baby seal that takes its place, animating the wall and nodding to its namesake owners. “It's fun to watch people guess," says Anushka. "Those who get it, get it. And it makes for a great conversation-starter." But the unlikely sea creature isn’t the only thing setting the entryway apart—because if the peach-toned front door (a