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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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Latest Articles

Architectural Digest •

This 16,000-square-foot bungalow in Karnataka’s Kundapur refuses to be ordinary

There is a particular kind of tragedy reserved for buildings: the tragedy of being merely fine. Such was the case for one bungalow in Karnataka's Kundapura—a perfectly serviceable modern shell, going up brick by brick, minding its own business, until its owners took one look and decided that 'fine' simply would not do. What they wanted, with the steady resolve of people who know exactly who they are, was a house that remembered where it came from. The owners in question, Sampath and Sonali Shett...
Livingetc •

[Print] Mumbai: Designing in the Dark

The call came from Hong Kong. The clients—well travelled, quietly assured, with homes across multiple cities—wanted their Mumbai apartment designed by SHROFFLEóN and handed back to them fully complete. There would be no extended back-and-forth, no iterative reviews, no site visits. A single phone conversation would set the course; after that, the architects would be left to their own devices. In fact, the first time Kayzad Shroff and María León would meet the homeowners in person would be on the day the project was finished.
AD Middle East •

This Heritage Resort in the Himalayan Mountains Was Once an Indian Freedom Fighter’s Refuge

Original timber, hidden stone masonry and a rich family legacy guided Design Legends' revival of this 150-year-old heritage resort tucked high in the mountains.Following his release from British house arrest in 1937, Indian freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose spent six months in the picturesque mountain town of Dalhousie recuperating from tuberculosis. Surrounded by the mist-veiled peaks of the Dhauladhar hills, his time in the tranquil retreat was spent mostly in quiet seclusion, famousl...
The Local Project •

MyHomeware’s Elevated Online Bathroom and Kitchen Offering

This is where MyHomeware comes in. An Australian-owned online retailer, the business has built a sterling reputation among renovators, homeowners and trade professionals seeking quality tapware and fixtures for both bathrooms and kitchens – without a custom-build price tag. The approach is straightforward, with considered ranges of taps, basins, sinks, showers, vanities, mirrors, toilets, baths, shaving cabinets, tiles, flooring and accessories sold directly to the public online, bypassing the u...
The Local Project •

[Print] Loller Street Apartments by Telha Clarke and Mim Design

In Melbourne’s bayside suburb of Brighton, Loller Street Apartments presents a considered expression of contemporary coastal living. Designed by Telha Clarke with interiors by Mim Design, the boutique development comprises six residences informed by modernist principles, generous proportions and a restrained material palette. Together, these elements shape a collection of homes that feel quietly refined yet relaxed, responding equally to both their architectural framework and their seaside setting.
The Local Project •

[Print] Firma HQ by Cera Stribley

Set within Richmond’s evolving commercial zone, Firma HQ presents a confident rethinking of what a building company’s workplace can be. Designed by Cera Stribley for Firma Construction Group, the project is the result of a longstanding partnership where roles blur in the best possible way. Architect, client and builder operated in close alignment, allowing ideas to move fluidly from concept to construction with unusual clarity and conviction.
The Local Project •

[Print] Currawong Ridge by DFJ Architects

Perched on an east-facing plateau along a steep escarpment, Currawong Ridge in Coorabell, New South Wales, unfolds as a quietly considered response to its setting. Designed by DFJ Architects, the one-bedroom home embraces the surrounding rainforest and distant coastal views while maintaining a deliberate sense of restraint. Rather than asserting itself on the landscape, the project works with it — a careful composition of light, materials and landscape that privileges intimacy and adaptability over scale.
Wallpaper* •

[Print] House Around the Sapodilla Trees

Between them, architects Sönke Hoof and Khushnu Panthaki Hoof have an uncanny gift for noticing the almost invisible—that fleeting detail, or lack thereof, that others might overlook. Yet on a summer’s day not so many years ago, as they left the golden clamour of Ahmedabad for the languid green of its hinterland, they arrived at a site that appeared to offer almost nothing at all. Like many such plots on the city’s outskirts—some 30 to 40 minutes away, beyond the tightening grip of urban density—the land held no preordained landmark, no obliging ruin, no obvious architectural cue. What it did hold was a tumbledown one-room cottage, once a weekend getaway, which went largely unnoticed. And, at the centre, two old sapodilla trees, which decidedly did not. ‘The trees immediately anchored the place,’ recalls Panthaki Hoof, one half of the Ahmedabad-based Studio Sangath, which she leads with Hoof. ‘Everything else felt negotiable.’
Livingetc •

[Print] COVER STORY / Karur: The Art of Almost

If there’s one thing architect Rose Thampy of Kochi-based Edom Architecture has learned over the years, it’s that the unplanned often has a better sense of proportion than anything over-determined. Her latest project—a renovation of a bare-shell duplex apartment in Karur, Tamil Nadu—proves the point. The commission wasn’t exactly on her bingo card, and what began one way soon became something else entirely, with the design evolving much like the brief itself—unexpectedly, but all the better for it.
Livingetc •

[Print] COVER STORY / Chennai: Everyone's a Character

Before you notice the timber coffered ceiling, you'll probably spot the wrestlers. Or perhaps the women carrying trishuls. Or the group of village women gathered on a dhurrie, facing a moss-green Chesterfield dotted with ivory cushions. In this 3,800 sq ft apartment in Chennai's Nungambakkam neighbourhood – designed by Kochi studio Build Beyond – every room introduces a new cast of characters. They appear in paintings, murals, and collected artworks throughout, offering glimpses into the lives, travels, and memories of its owners, Balraj and Preetha.
Architectural Digest •

This wellness centre in Kerala's Puthoor proves that healing begins with feeling at home

What is home? Most people will tell you it's as much a feeling as it is a place. Yet no two people perceive it in quite the same way. Some crave crisp minimalism; others believe there's no such thing as too many books, heirlooms or cushions. Home, it turns out, is one of the few things that refuses to be one-size-fits-all. But that rule, as architects Nanda Kishor, Vivin Shankar and Sebastian K John would argue, doesn't necessarily apply to wellness centres. When the founders of Kollam-based studio The Design Room were commissioned to design Aswanimodam Ayurveda, an Ayurvedic retreat in Kerala's Puthoor, they arrived at an unexpected conclusion: if healing is universal, perhaps the feeling of home can be too. Their answer was to create a space that evokes the warmth, familiarity and comfort of home—a place where, for once, one size might just fit all.
The Local Project •

Omada by Studio Gram

On a heritage streetscape in the city, a vivid blue door interrupts the sandstone and render like a single brushstroke of Aegean sky. It’s the first hint that something different awaits inside – and it’s entirely intentional. That door is the only overt reference to Greece visible at Omada, a restaurant built not on cultural cliché but on architectural conviction.
The brief was to create a contemporary Greek restaurant with genuine cultural resonance, without leaning on the visual shorthand so o...
The Local Project •

Gunn Ridge House by Kennedy Nolan

Set beside the Yarra River, Gunn Ridge House in Toorak is a defining example of the distinctly Australian modernism championed by Merchant Builders, the influential Melbourne project-home company that brought architect-designed living to the mainstream in the 1960s and ’70s. Originally designed by Graeme Gunn for Merchant Builders co-founder John Ridge, the home has been recently renovated and extended by Kennedy Nolan, whose intervention deftly balances restoration with reinvention.
Architectural Digest •

A publisher and wildlife conservationist's Wayanad home lies amid the wilderness

Site visits were meant to be about mud walls. For this Wayanad home, they kept turning into bird walks. "We'd go up expecting to check on the construction," laughs architect Thressia Paul, "and end up on a nature walk instead, with a running commentary of fascinating facts about everything we saw"—every butterfly, every startled squirrel, every rustle in the undergrowth flagged and named by the clients before anyone had so much as looked at the walls. Which, in hindsight, tells you almost everyt...
The Local Project •

Hidden Valley by Richard Beard Architects

Set into the quiet, undulating landscape of Woodside, California, Hidden Valley presents as a measured response to place, memory and restraint. Designed by Richard Beard Architects and belonging to a Stanford professor whose deep appreciation for art, books and landscape informs every layer of its design, the 550-square-metre residence sits lightly within its rural setting, where mature oak trees, sloping terrain and distant views of the Santa Cruz Mountains shape both experience and intent. Approached from below the hill, the arrival is deliberately gradual. A large oak tree anchors the entry sequence, its presence preserved and subtly elevated through improved circulation. Low St. Helena stone site walls and bluestone pavers guide movement upward, composing a quiet procession toward an understated front entrance. There is no grand gesture here – only a calibrated humility that sets the tone for what follows.
Architectural Digest •

This Thrissur, Kerala bungalow has green pockets that function as its lungs

It’s often said that distance makes the heart grow fonder—but when the distance in question is between a new home and old, it tends to make the heart a touch more inventive too. This theory, or theorem, as architect Manuraj CR insists it is, held true for one NRI couple, who put their inventiveness to good use when designing a holiday home in their childhood town of Thrissur, Kerala. The home, as they imagined it, was shaped by memory—unfiltered and familiar, and layered with the textures they grew up with. In other words, a space that was, somewhat paradoxically, more Keralan than many of its Keralan neighbours. Their rationale was simple: if they were coming back to Kerala, to Kerala they would come. “It had to register as a homecoming in every sense,” explains Manuraj, founder of Thrissur practice i2a Architects Studio, who was assisted on the project by associate architect Sanjukta Chakraborty. “A homecoming, with the ease—and comfort—of a hotel.”
The Local Project •

In Focus: Abey - Issue 21 Feature

If Italian design is often about elevating the everyday, FIMA Carlo Frattini makes a compelling case for starting with water. Now available in Australia exclusively through Abey Australia, the brand arrives with a curated offering that feels both considered and expansive. At its core are the established FIMA SO and FIMA FLÒ collections, which set the tone for the company’s approach to tapware: sculptural yet restrained, with an emphasis on proportion, tactility and detail.
Architectural Digest •

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

Most couples spend the weeks before their wedding agonising over seating charts and sangeet playlists. Architects Kasturi Wagh and Vineet Hingorani had those too—plus a few extra items on the to-do list that most brides and grooms don't. “We were finalising upholstery, marble, and lighting details alongside outfits and guest lists,” Wagh says, making it sound almost normal to be swatch-testing limewash tints between fittings for a lehenga. “We often joke that this restaurant was our 'other wedding,'” she adds. “Thankfully, our project lead, Yadavi Ganguli, held the fort on site, ensuring the project reached the finish line while we were at our own.” For the co-founders of Mumbai studio kaviar:collaborative, wedding planning and a restaurant build-out weren't competing priorities—they were two projects running on the same deadline, in the same breath.
The Local Project •

Currawong Ridge by DFJ Architects

Perched on an east-facing plateau along a steep escarpment, Currawong Ridge in Coorabell, New South Wales, is a quietly considered response to a rugged setting. Designed by DFJ Architects, the home settles gently into the surrounding rainforest, with vistas stretching across the valley to the ocean and the lighthouse beyond. The coastal site has been approached with restraint; rather than asserting itself on the landscape, the project works with it. It’s a careful composition of light, materials and planting that privileges intimacy and adaptability over scale.
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 —...
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AD Visits

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