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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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Livingetc •

[Print] 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.
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 —...
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...
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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