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Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: This 650-square-foot Mulund home has one rule: no straight lines

The owners, Jyoti and Punit Malde, had a longer list of things they didn’t want than things they did. To wit: nothing flashy, nothing too colourful, and certainly nothing fussy or forced. “We wanted it to feel calm, warm, and soulful—a space that instantly makes us feel at ease,” says Jyoti. Their style leaned Japandi, with a love for natural textures, muted tones, warm materials, and those little details that make a space feel lived-in. And the home reflects it beautifully. Softly textured beig...
Architectural Digest •

Inside a Bengaluru home that bridges the gap between both ends of the country

What do you get when a boy from Delhi and a girl from Andhra Pradesh buy a house together? “Total chaos,” grins Chandana Vakulabharanam, the girl in question—evidently not without reason. When the strategy consultant and her Delhi-born husband, entrepreneur Lalith Gudipati, bought A Bengaluru home not too long ago, they knew in their bones that they'd made the right choice.“The way the sunlight streamed in made the entire place feel vibrant and full of energy, and we instantly knew it was meant...
Architectural Digest •

This Bengaluru apartment is a grandmother's gracious gift to a newlywed couple

First homes are always special, but even more so when they come as a wedding gift from your grandmother. “We’d always dreamed of creating a nest of our own, and this home made that possible,” says UI/UX designer Gayathri Nair, speaking of the gift from her grandmother-in-law. Perched on the 14th floor and surrounded by lush greenery, this Bengaluru apartment offered a serene, secluded escape—but as Nair explains, it still needed a touch of personality to truly feel like home.
Architectural Digest •

For its owners, this bougainvillea-draped Bengaluru villa is a long-held dream come true

For most, destiny is written in the stars, but in Mitali Sodhi and Vishwastam Shukla’s case, it bloomed in the bougainvillea. “We knew right away,” says Sodhi of their east Bengaluru villa—situated inside a 15-year-old enclave—whose bougainvillea-draped garden, serendipitously, was a manifestation many years in the making. “I had dreamed about a garden like this for years,” she continues. “So it was almost as if the garden had been waiting for me all along.” For the couple, the decision began and ended there: this was their home—the one where bougainvillea had spilled out of their dreams and taken root in reality.
Architectural Digest •

This holiday home in Kochi is a sunlit ode to Kerala's vernacular

The thing about worshipping the sun, if you're not careful, is that it might reciprocate a tad too emphatically—so emphatically, in fact, that architect Reshma Geordy of Thiruvananthapuram-based The Design Verses, a sun worshipper herself, found herself in something of a predicament not too terribly long ago. “It was a tricky thing,” says Geordy, whose thing in question was creating a tropical sunhouse of sorts, in a land as hot as Kochi. “The question was—how do we create a sun-drenched home without the heat that comes with it?” adds the architect, whose client, Basil Thomas—a Kerala-born, Canada-based engineer who had admittedly resigned himself to a life of icy chill halfway across the world—envisaged a holiday home in Kochi with warm and sunny spaces.
Architectural Digest India •

These Ahmedabad-based architects built a house with “the most beautiful entrance foyer”

Also read: 4 weekend homes in Ahmedabad that are sanctuaries away from the cityThe builder gave carte blanche to the pair, with just one cheeky caveat: “create the most beautiful foyer you’ve ever seen”—and maybe sprinkle in a little history while at it. “We wanted something that spoke the city’s language—not the polished brochure version, but the one tucked away in old pols, behind carved wooden doors and inside quiet inner chowks,” says Jariwala. For her and Kaswala, the foyer wasn’t just an e...
Architectural Digest India •

These Ahmedabad-based architects built a house with “the most beautiful entrance foyer”

Any interior designer will tell you that creating a home that reflects its owners is easy—until the couple disagrees on the sofa. Only, in architect Smeet Kaswala and interior designer Avishi Jariwala’s case, there was no couple, nor any owner. “Not that it makes things any easier,” muses Jariwala, who runs Ahmedabad-based Studio Espaazo with Kaswala. If anything, their ask was even more daunting: to create a model flat for a builder which could serve anyone, a universal archetype without leaning too far into one person’s taste or another’s lifestyle—an apartment that felt aspirational, but never alienating.
Architectural Digest •

Eggs, mushrooms, and flowers in a fantastical shoot by Porus & Prayag, for Nama Home

Photographer Porus Vimadalal enjoys his eggs with a side of furniture for Nama Home. “And my mushrooms too,” quips the Mumbai-based creative director, who used the said protein sources to nourish his latest project with his husband, Prayag Menon: a still life campaign for the metal furniture brand Nama Home. “I was immediately drawn to their design philosophy,” continues Vimadalal, noted for being the imaginative force behind some of India’s most successful photography campaigns, including sever...
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 •

The Designers Behind This Former Georgia O’Keeffe Hangout Only Added Details That Felt Original

All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.As the AD PRO Directory designers quickly realized, the real challenge was exercising tactful restraint. “We’re usually brought in to add architectural details that make a house feel special. This time, the house was the special part. It was more about holding back so the architecture could shine,” notes...
Architectural Digest •

This Coonoor bungalow, aged 80 years, is a colonial revival in the Nilgiris

Maintaining a historic home, like this Coonoor bungalow, is a privilege few receive, but reviving one from the ashes of its past is a privilege even fewer desire. Ajith and Shashi Jhabakh, however, were undeterred. When the Coimbatore-based couple approached architect Sowmya Kumar of OWM Architecture, they weren’t seeking an easy restoration—they wanted to breathe new life into a house that had weathered time, loss, and neglect.Built in the 1940s during the British Raj and passed down through ge...
Architectural Digest •

A California Home Rediscovers its French Contemporary Roots With Cloudlike Details

There was something special about the home’s French Contemporary bones—but there was also something missing. “While Gina and Dan loved the French influences, they really wanted us to emphasize the contemporary aspect—to truly bring the home into the present,” says Sulaiman, who set about creating a warm and inviting oasis—somewhere the family could huddle, kick off their boots, and disappear for a while. And then, just as easily, reemerge and entertain when the mood struck. She didn’t design the...
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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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,...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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.
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest India •

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...
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