Architectural Digest

This 3,500-square-foot coastal villa in Chennai channels Mediterranean magic

The thing that people often forget about architects is their ability to roll with the punches—to expand a room by a few square metres, move a window an inch or two to the left, flip the living room to frame a better view. Or, as in the case of Raghuveer Ramesh and Sharanya Srinivasan, the duo behind Chennai-based Studio Context, do all that—and then decide to promptly not. “We kept doubling every room with each design round. At one point, Sharanya insisted that she’d have to start cutting down t...

Inside BILT Rewards founder Ankur Jain and former WWE wrestler Erika Hammond's home in NYC

Also read: A retired couple’s home in Bengaluru becomes a quiet ode to neoclassicism and memoryThe thing about designing a home for a couple, especially one as creatively distinct as Jain and Hammond—he breathes technology, she’s a former beauty queen and the founder of STRONG by Erika, a boxing-inspired fitness app—is finding a way to hold a mirror to who they are individually, and who they are together. As Mehlre explains, “Ankur and Erika represent the perfect fusion of intellectual sophistic...

This store in Hyderabad is inspired by Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat

If this store in Hyderabad were a movie set, the customers would naturally be the protagonist. “Which is why it had to inspire an atmosphere that makes people feel great about what they are buying,” says Dev. For him, that looked like jharokha-inspired backdrops and dazzling open displays, arranged so as to blur the distinction between merchandise and mise-en-scène—where every sari feels like part of the narrative, not just a product on a rail. Dev puts a finer point on the subject. “Every conve...

In this Chennai home, hotel-like luxury meets heartfelt design

James Stephen, Managing Director of the Clinton Group of Hotels, is no stranger to the art of fine living. But, as he realised early last year, delighting others is far easier a feat than delighting himself. “Every time I received a quote, I’d have to take a glass of water to calm myself down,” says the Chennai-based entrepreneur. “Then I’d call Varsha to discuss it…only to be told to take another glass because this was just fifty per cent of the quote.” The Varsha in question was Varsha Menon,...

Tour a Country Manor in Beverly Hills That Evokes the Romantic French Countryside

Maybe it’s because the homeowners are creatives themselves or because designer and clients were both on the same dramatic wavelength, but there was one wild idea that everyone agreed to early on. “We floated the idea of painting tiny birds in secret spots around the house, but worried it might feel like a children’s room gone rogue,” says one owner. Lucky for everyone, the worry was short-lived, and the design team let the idea take flight—if not as literal birds, at least in what they represent...

This Bengaluru apartment feels like a slice of quiet paradise

Sometimes the best decision wasn’t what to add, but what to leave out. It came down to knowing when to pause and let the space speak for itself,” reflects Kashyap. The art—or lack thereof—in the passage of this Bengaluru apartment is a case in point. Machangada adds: “We wanted a wall lined with family photos in the passage, but Pooja suggested keeping it clean and highlighting just a single statement piece at the end. The idea transformed the space.” What the home lacks in colour, it more than...

Andblack Design Studio’s Loop series explores the idea of infinity through form

If there is a special talent of Andblack Design Studio, it is to imagine a building and a bulb in the same breath. “Spatial and furniture design are two sides of the same coin,” says Jwalant Mahadevwala, founder and principal designer of the Ahmedabad-based interdisciplinary studio, whose idiosyncratic Weltanschauung continues to shape its multifaceted practice. The studio’s latest Loop series—comprising a swing, a console and a serpentine light—is a collection of curved curiosities that embody the concept of infinity. Each is sculptural yet functional, sitting at the intersection of architecture and art.

Craftsmanship meets innovation in the Dash pendant lamp by Italian brand Ghidini 1961

Let there be light—or perhaps not. That seems to be the ethos behind American architect and designer Johanna Grawunder’s Dash light, a sculptural piece that commands attention whether switched on or off, made for Italian furniture and lighting brand Ghidini 1961. Suspended from a bar, the angular pendant lamp has a rhythmic sequence of translucent grey cast acrylic panels, their upper edges softly aglow. Debuting at Salone del Mobile 2025 in Milan, the luminaire filters light in a geometric danc...

This Chennai home honours its elderly residents with thoughtful design

If there were such a thing as a guiding light, it was the pursuit of peace—a calm so tangible it could be felt in the textures, the tones, and the quiet restraint of every room. Yogesh puts a finer point on it: “The home was envisioned as a tranquil retreat that would be both practical and emotionally grounding, designed to support slower, more mindful living.” Anything that inspired serenity found its place, taking shape in mid-century modern furniture and Art Deco forms. In came a cavalcade of...

A Chennai bungalow steeped in heritage becomes a designer’s restorative family retreat

Farah Agarwal appreciates opinions, but if she’s learned anything over her two-decade-long career as an interior designer, it’s that voicing hers goes a long way. “With clients, it’s often a two-way street. I give my opinion, they give theirs, and then we reach a middle ground,” says the founder and principal of the Chennai-based interior design studio Chestnut Storeys. But with family, Agarwal’s middle ground isn’t always in the middle.When it came to redesigning a 50-year-old Chennai bungalow...

Inside a 100-year-old Goa bungalow where heritage meets high function

If there’s one thing restoration architect Rochelle Santimano has down to a fine art, it’s designing homes over a fish thali—or two. “It became our thing,” she says of herself and her client, Gautam Birudavolu, whose home, a 100-year-old Goa bungalow in the village of Parra—which he shares with his wife, Shivani, and their two teenage daughters—owes its transformation less to CAD drawings and more to chonak-fuelled epiphanies. The brief, as she recalls, was simple enough: to restore the home and...

Tour a Midcentury-Modern Revival in Austin Brimming With Nostalgia

For Austin-based entrepreneur Amy Wilson Janice, Jimi Hendrix will always be alive—if not in flesh, then at least framed in Technicolor on her living room wall. “I saw the hand-colored photograph in a gallery but wasn’t sure Amy would even know who he was,” says Janice’s interior designer, Fern Santini, of the Hendrix portrait in question, taken by Gered Mankowitz in 1965. “When I showed it to Amy, she started crying.” Not because she didn’t love it, but because she did. Hendrix was a link to he...

This serene village home in Goa is stitched together by gardens

On their first visit to the Goan village of Corjuem, architects Teja Amonkar and Yatin Fulari of Goa-based Field Atelier felt a deep connection to the landscape. “It was special,” says Amonkar of the rural stretch. A narrow, winding road flanked by coconut trees led up to the site, and at the centre stood two towering trees, resplendent against the otherwise barren rear side, as if marking the land’s quiet, dignified heart. “I remember thinking those were the perfect anchors,” says Fulari of the...

Inside the Houston home of Pooja Jesrani, NASA’s first female Asian Flight Director

Anyone who knows her will tell you that Alexandra Killion has a knack for communicating with just about any space. But it was only when the Houston-based interior designer took on a project last year for Pooja Jesrani—the 15th woman ever to hold the role of Flight Director at NASA, and the first of South Asian descent—and her technology lawyer husband, Purav, that her client showed her what it took to communicate with a different kind of space.

This Kochi bungalow is a 5,500-square-foot perfect picture of Eden

Being an interior designer is being a jack of all trades, but being the master of one—above all else—is what architects Dhiya Anna Charley and Thomas Joseph deem their trump card. “The art of balance!” declare the Kochi-based co-founders of studio Design Narrative—referring to the Herculean task of ensuring that each client feels equally valued and appreciated, even when said clients are husband and wife.“They had very different perspectives when it came to design. Nikin loved the charm and char...

Tour a Massachusetts Home With a Tropical Modern Flair

Some days, driving home from work, Sashya Thind still has to pinch herself at the sight of the little house on the hill. “I love seeing it up there, glowing in the evening light,” says the Massachusetts-based interior designer, who admits the Weston home almost wasn’t meant to be. “We had put in an offer on another recently renovated house, but something about it just didn’t feel like us. We walked away from that, and luckily, this gem came on the market a few weeks later. We all fell in love wi...

This home in Mumbai is a study in universal energy, happily balancing calm and colour

The tour de force, indubitably, is the bar unit, which cosplays as a coffee station by day. “It’s supposed to, anyway,” chuckles Vakharia. “But during testing, we discovered that someone—not naming names—had already stocked it with wine…at 10 AM. Efficiency at its finest!” Moonshine aside, both designers agree that it’s the art that brings the maximum pizzazz. “The artscape is an ode to their wedding at Jim Corbett National Park. There are prints of white Bengal tigers, silhouetted abstractions...

This beach house in Chennai channels the soul of a Greek island

Someone once said that the ultimate luxury is time, but that someone, insists interior designer Manmeet Arora, had probably never lived by the sea. If there’s one thing the founder and principal of the Goa-based LOC Design House has firmly come to learn since moving from Mumbai to Goa during COVID, it’s that living by the coast can be good for the soul—so good, in fact, that you might consider never leaving, unless it involves travelling to another coastline just as special.In Arora’s case, that...

This Hyderabad home is a sun-drenched oasis grown from the earth

For Vamshidhar and Mounica, the only true reference point for sustainable building is traditional wisdom, “particularly the vernacular architecture and construction techniques prevalent in South India,” Mounica notes. This informed the use of lime flooring, resourceful employment of local soil and materials, and a Madras terrace roof. “The aim was to blend traditional knowledge with modern ingenuity to create a home that is both environmentally responsible and aesthetically harmonious,” Vamshidh...

This Kochi home is the ultimate cocoon of calm

Architect Dhiya Anna Charley isn't the tardy type, but there was hardly a day last summer when she didn’t arrive at The Lofts, Kochi, to find her client already settled comfortably on the sofa. “Liya would usually arrive a little early and quietly settle into one of the living room setups,” she says of the Kochi furniture store—formerly a residence—which she had designed in 2020 and where, in the following months, she would come to know Liya George. “The store was a renovated home, styled with a...

Inside an Austin Bungalow That’s Part Groovy, Part Grandpa-Chic

Randall Mays, businessman, investor, and philanthropist, knows how to throw a good party—if your idea of a party involves meditating on grass under open skies (the kind you sit on, not smoke). Interior designer Christina Simon of her eponymous Austin studio can attest to Mays’s definition, having had a hand in transforming his circa-1915 bungalow in Travis Heights, Austin, into a space that’s grandpa-chic by day and trippy by night. “It serves as a lively venue for hosting parties during SXSW an...

This Mumbai apartment is an oasis of beige, black, and burnt vermillion

Maybe it’s because they studied in Mumbai and began working in Ahmedabad, but Salia and Shah both believe that arriving at a design language for the Mumbai apartment was challenged by their cross-city beginnings. “Both the cities sit at very different ends of the design spectrum—Mumbai with its fast pace, layered density, and evolving style; Ahmedabad with its slower rhythm, deep-rooted material culture, and quiet modernism. Bridging these contrasting sensibilities meant unlearning and relearnin...

This architecture studio’s 450-square-foot Pune office is a monolithic masterpiece

In another life, architects Chetan Lahoti and Anand Deshmukh of Pune-based Mind Manifestation Design might just have mastered the runway. “The kind with models, not planes,” Deshmukh says cheekily, pointing to the studio’s new 450-square-foot office extension in Pune. Except, if the sculptural staircase inside is anything to go by, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that’s the real showstopper. “It’s an art piece that really brings the whole space together,” nods Lahoti, adding that it’s also slight...
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