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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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest India •

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.
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

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...
Architectural Digest •

This bungalow in Ahmedabad effortlessly grows out of the landscape

“From the outset, we wanted a home that was simple, in harmony with nature, and a step towards sustainable living,” says Vibha, a development sector professional. So, by the time she and Naivik, an entrepreneur, reached out to Ahmedabad-based andblack design studio—whom they discovered through mutual friends—their brief was more or less set in stone, albeit the kind of stone that the principals Kanika and Jwalant Mahadevwala had the potential to re-sculpt.As the architects saw it, the home had t...
Architectural Digest •

This bungalow in Raipur is inspired by the jungle huts of Kanha

You know the adage—you can take people out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the people. “Or maybe you don’t know it,” chuckles architect Rishabh Jain of Raipur-based MY MAATI, who takes full credit—no less—for coining the saying himself. As for the inspiration behind it, he concedes that credit goes to his clients: a travel enthusiast and a wildlife explorer.Longing for a home reminiscent of the outdoors, the couple had a precise brief—to take them back, at least in spirit, to the...
Architectural Digest •

This Bengaluru home embraces breathtaking views and the beauty of craftsmanship

This meant nothing picture-perfect or precious. As for what that looked like, “we had no idea,” Mandadi chuckles. “Like most people, we started with Pinterest boards, drawn to bits and pieces of mid-century modern, wabi-sabi, and minimalism, but nothing really felt like ‘us’,” she says of the process. It might have been a dead end if not for interior and furniture designer Anisha Chandy of her namesake Bengaluru-based studio, whom they found on Instagram and who mercifully stepped in to help the...
Architectural Digest •

This Dubai apartment is a contemporary nod to its owners’ roots in Kerala

For any couple, the real litmus test of compatibility is designing a home together. Ashish Jose and Meera Sunny Ashish are living proof. “Never before, never again,” jokes Meera about their experience of designing their Dubai apartment, which she confirms was a crash course in patience, negotiation, and the fine art of pretending to like each other’s questionable décor choices. “From the very start, Ashish and I had completely opposite reactions to certain design choices. If our marriage survive...
Architectural Digest •

This Mumbai apartment feels like a cottage straight out of a still life painting

The thing about designing a Mumbai apartment is that they all tend to blur together—matchbox layouts, builder-grade flooring, and endless sprawls of concrete stretching in every direction. Interior designer Shraddha Shah, however, has never seen it that way. Arguably, the closest she ever came to designing two in the same breath was when she landed projects, several months apart, in the same building—allowing her to shuttle between site meetings in a record three minutes flat. “False,” chuckles the founder and principal of Mumbai-based Olive Roof, dismissing the notion of sameness. “If anything, it took us longer to nail the layout of the second one. The initial plan from the builder was 100% impractical, and I had to sketch and re-sketch to get the zoning right.” But iteration after iteration wasn’t in vain—because as she tells it, the result, fortuitously, was a blueprint stripped of clutter and brimming with soul.
Architectural Digest •

AD Small Spaces: This Bengaluru apartment is a soulful escape where the light never leaves

Interior designer Shweta Arya Malaviya speaks to the sun—sometimes at sunrise, sometimes at dusk. But never does a day pass when she doesn’t at all. As she explains, there’s something special about pausing to take in its light—and listen as it speaks back in gilded corners, coffee table reflections, and luminous layouts. “It’s my most trusted collaborator,” she muses. If her last project, a 950-square-foot apartment in Bengaluru’s Whitefield, is anything to go by, you know she isn’t wrong. “It’s...
Architectural Digest •

This luminous apartment in Pune is a wabi-sabi wonderland

In embracing wabi-sabi for this apartment in Pune, Rohra didn’t overlook other considerations, not least the importance of making the home comfortable for all five family members—the couple themselves, Avinash’s mother, and their two daughters. “The main challenge was designing a comfortable space for a child with special needs—eliminating sharp edges, fragile elements, and harsh surfaces, including fabrics, while ensuring all safety measures were met,” she avers, noting that the goal was to kee...
Architectural Digest India •

This luminous apartment in Pune is a wabi-sabi wonderland

In embracing wabi-sabi for this apartment in Pune, Rohra didn’t overlook other considerations, not least the importance of making the home comfortable for all five family members—the couple themselves, Avinash’s mother, and their two daughters. “The main challenge was designing a comfortable space for a child with special needs—eliminating sharp edges, fragile elements, and harsh surfaces, including fabrics, while ensuring all safety measures were met,” she avers, noting that the goal was to kee...
Architectural Digest •

Tarun Tahiliani gives this Hyderabad house an India Modern makeover

A Tarun Tahiliani creation lingers in memory long after a garment has been worn or a space has been lived in. Perhaps that’s why, when it came time to renovate their 20-year-old home in Hyderabad’s plush Jubilee Hills, chartered accountant Potukuchi Murali Mohana Rao and his wife, real estate entrepreneur Potukuchi Naganandini, felt an undeniable pull towards the renowned designer once again. After all, Tahiliani’s magic touch isn’t limited to fashion; it parlays fortuitously enough, into interi...
Architectural Digest •

This wada-style bungalow in Maharashtra’s Amravati blends heritage with modern charm

Keeping with tradition is often the default in matters of faith and family, but not exactly convenient—or necessary—when attempting to trail-blaze a career in alternative home design. Architects Chetan Lahoti and Anand Deshmukh of Pune-based Mind Manifestation Design don’t consider themselves traditional—which makes it all the more intriguing that their latest project, a Wada-style bungalow in Maharashtra for a family of six, has one foot firmly planted in the past. "To be fair, the other one’s...
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