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Architectural Digest •

This 1950s Los Angeles Home Is a Sanctuary for All Seasons

More often than not the best things in life happen when you least expect them. Or as one Los Angeles couple puts it: “when you’re out of town with zero cell phone reception.” Their current home, a two-story 1950s abode in the heart of sunny Brentwood, was a lucky find. “We never even visited. One of our parents went and saw the place for us and walked us through it via a spotty FaceTime. Lo and behold, we placed an offer the same day,” says the wife.
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This Couple’s Colorful, Pattern-Rich San Francisco Home Is Designed to Last Forever

The thing about living in an old property with great (if worn-out) bones is deciding when and how to give it a new lease on life. For one writer-photographer couple in San Francisco, the tipping point was the near death of their kitchen, which, as interior designer Christine Lin puts it, was, “shall we say, nonresponsive.” The Shingle-style house dates to 1906 and the couple, empty nesters with adult children, have lived in one of its three flats for years. “They really love the place and it is
Architectural Digest •

This sprawling Mumbai apartment brings the ‘Dark Academia’ aesthetic to life

Peeling walls and fading floor tiles aren’t exactly the sort of thing that would excite anyone, but there was something about the tumbledown Mumbai apartment that would become interior designer Shraddha Shah’s next canvas that charmed her almost immediately. “The apartment had remained untouched for years, so there was this beautiful rusticity that shone through,” says Shah, the founder and principal of Mumbai-based interior design practice Olive Roof. So many, and so great, were the imperfections, that Shah decided to keep them, at least in spirit, to create an aesthetic lexicon informed by unfinished finishes, live edge wood panels and deliberately exposed brick. Nothing here would be perfect, nor did it need to be.
Architectural Digest •

Abraham & Thakore's new office in Noida embodies their signature sartorial sensibility

There’s something about Abraham & Thakore’s newly renovated Noida office that feels like they have conceived it in the same breath, and by the same sleight of hand, as one of their collections. It shares the same non-conforming bent, the same relaxed spirit, and a local sensitivity that balances a global sensibility. It is evident that the designers behind the space are no different from the designers behind the apparel. But as David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore, co-founders of the namesake label, point out, that is all subterfuge.
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This Interior Designer’s LA Bungalow Perfectly Embodies Her Maximalist Spirit

Francesca Grace is a city girl, but the kind that owns chickens, rides horses, and spends her free time scouting out the next swimmable lake. “I’m a grandma at heart,” says the interior designer, who also double-hats as a home stager under her eponymous brand Francesca Grace Home. One look inside her 1920s-inspired Silver Lake, Los Angeles, bungalow, and you know she isn’t wrong. “My last home was an actual 1920s build, but I was forced to say goodbye because the floorboards were falling apart,”
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An Artist Couple Transformed Their Century-Old LA Home Into a Colorful Work of Art

If history is anything to go by, Devon Oder and Adam Miller redecorate best under pressure. The year 2015 was when the LA-based artist couple first put the theory to the test. As newly expectant parents and newly minted homeowners of a circa-1932 home in LA’s Eagle Rock neighborhood, they were determined to renovate and move in before the birth of their baby. But their son, River, had other plans. He arrived early, and Adam moved in by the skin of his teeth while his wife and son recouped in hos
Architectural Digest •

A 100-year-old outhouse in Goa is reborn as a rustic bar

As Santimano tells it, her first site visit with clients Kartik Vasudeva and Agrini Satyarthi presented a bit of a predicament. Because it held two structures—an outhouse on the lower level and a firewood storage room above—blending the two with not just each other, but also with the large tree-laden courtyard out front, was something of a conundrum. Not that Santimano minded. She saw it as an opportunity to reimagine the three, although she admits it took her a while to figure out just how. She
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This California Kitchen Is Like a Quaint Postcard From Italy

Though the whole home was in need of some TLC, it was clear that the kitchen needed it the most. The layout was cramped and closed it off from the living and dining areas. “We didn’t have the space or setting to host people here,” Ashley shares. The solution was clear—the walls had to go. And so they did, thanks to architect Steve Souder and interior designer Leah Vitrano, who stepped in to help the couple overhaul the space. “I remember one evening, while sitting in our previous kitchen, Steve
Architectural Digest •

This Alibag holiday home is a Wunderkammer of eclectic objects

Trust Farah Ahmed Mathias and Dhaval Shellugar to pull a rabbit out of the hat when attempting something new. Or multiple at once, if their latest masterstroke, a 21,000-square-foot Alibag holiday home, is anything to go by. Unencumbered by a specific style or aesthetic, it isn’t, as Mathias puts it, “confined by a concept.” And, as one quick sweep of the casa proves, it isn’t bedevilled by it either. When it came to designing the larger-than-life estate for a joint family of restaurateurs, Mathias and Shellugar, the co-founders and principals of Bengaluru-based multidisciplinary collective FADD Studio, were mindful of optimising the striving envelope, executed by Vandana and Ranjit Sinh of Mumbai-based Ranjit Sinh Associates, both by scale and signature. They resorted to using a layered approach, mining objects from across the length and breadth of the country, and some from far beyond. So much so, that the pair agrees that the resultant aesthetic lexicon “needs to be experienced to be felt,” and, in what some may dismiss as hyperbole, but the pair clarifies is patently not, that “the volume needs to be heard, the air tasted, the colours touched, and the space seen, for it all to make sense.”
Architectural Digest •

[Print] The Dwaar Collection by Ashiesh Shah

In his 20-something years as a designer, Ashiesh Shah has time and again found inspiration in historic objects, but never enough to incorporate them fully into his designs. That is, until last year, when he decided to rewrite his own rulebook. His latest collection, Dwaar, unveiled at the 2024 India Art Fair, comprises 16 objects. Each, save for two, is tailored around one prized artefact, or ensemble of artefacts, mined from his own personal treasure trove.
Architectural Digest •

[Print] Outfitted to the Nines: Abraham & Thakore's New Noida Store

There’s something about legacy design label Abraham & Thakore’s newly renovated Noida office that feels like it could have been conceived in the same breath, and by the same sleight of hand, as one of its collections. It shares with them the same non-conforming bent, the same relaxed spirit, and a local sensitivity that balances, even belies, a global sensibility. So much so, that it might seem that the designers behind the space are no different from the designers behind the apparel. But as David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore, co-founders of the eponymous label, point out, that is all subterfuge.
Architectural Digest •

Delving into ace designer Ashiesh Shah's 'Dwaar' of perception

In his 20-something years as a designer, Ashiesh Shah has time and again found inspiration in historic objects, but never enough to incorporate them fully into his designs. That is, until last year, when he decided to rewrite his own rulebook. His latest collection, Dwaar, unveiled at the 2024 India Art Fair, comprises 16 objects. Each, save for two, is tailored around one prized artefact, or ensemble of artefacts, mined from his own personal treasure trove.

Dwaar borrows its name from the Sans
Architectural Digest •

Inside a 1950s Bel Air Home With Canyon, Pool, and Ocean Views

Moser used the floor plan as his point of departure, redrawing the interior in a bid to maximize each space. “The home isn’t massive, so we really had to think about how the client would live in the home—where he would eat or entertain, or how he would engage with the outdoors,” says the designer, who preceded through a process of trial and error, alongside builder Peter McCoy and construction facilitator Victor Kaufman, to arrive at the final layout.

Because the owner isn’t the sort to enterta
Architectural Digest •

This traditional homestay in Himachal Pradesh was redesigned with discarded material

If you’ve ever roamed any Himalayan hinterland, or stopped by to admire a homestay in Himachal Pradesh, you've likely at some point encountered a Kath-Kuni structure; although whether you registered it as such is altogether a different matter. Made of alternating layers of wood and stone, and cemented together sans mortar, the indigenous construction technique is writ large across homes and temples dotting the high ground, as much in the Himachal village of Jari as any of its sleepy neighbouring
Architectural Digest •

This Bengaluru villa is an ode to the sea, sky and stars

Whoever said that the most exciting attractions are between opposites that never meet—the whoever being Andy Warhol—clearly hadn't met Asmita Sinha and Ganesh Pitchiah. “It's a boon and a bane,” says Sinha, an ex-investment banker who found her opposite in Pitchiah, a financial product manager, a few years ago, and married him at the height of COVID. “At our house, decisions are debates. We're usually seeing eye to eye one minute and standing hand to throat the next,” jokes the designer, one hal
Architectural Digest •

This newlywed couple's Lahore home is a symphony of cool tones and cooler details

If a mother knows best, a mother-in-law knows ‘best-er’. At least in matters regarding her daughter-in-law, or more specifically, welcoming her their Lahore home. For the matriarch of the Zulfiqar family, her son’s imminent wedding prompted a bevy of seminal overhauls, chief among them the renovation of one wing of the family’s newly constructed Lahore home, to serve as a newlywed nest for the young couple. The first step, of course, was finding a designer—or two—to take up the design reins. Ent
Architectural Digest •

This Minnesota home tips its hat to its owners’ colourful past in India

Enlightened are those who can blind-touch a material and immediately know its worth. “It's a serious talent,” deadpans interior designer Heather Peterson, founder and principal of her namesake Minnesota-based interior design studio, whose last clients, a couple in their forties, were, shall we say, particularly enlightened. “The husband was the ‘Princess and the Pea’ kind who could feel if something was badly made,” she continues. “He was also very drawn to soft materials, so part of our process
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This 1960s Atlanta Kitchen Keeps the Sunshine Close

There are two kinds of people in the world—those that love a turnkey home, and those that don’t. Ryan Abrams is a faithful member of the latter club. So much so that when he was hunting for a home in east Atlanta a few years ago, his main condition was finding one that was completely untouched. “I saw a lot of renovations that felt like easy flips, with poor paint and tile choices, and unfortunate layouts. When I saw this house, I immediately saw possibilities. It was nice to be able to make it
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Inside a Whimsically Renovated English Apartment That’s Probably Not Haunted

Interior designer Sophie van Winden lives alone in her apartment in Margate, England, but she might not be the only soul that inhabits the place. “This area has many mediaeval crypts. The plumbers had to spend a fair bit of time under the floorboards sorting out all the pipes. One day they found a Victorian children’s pram, all rusted and bent. They were terrified!” she shares, insisting that despite the discovery, she is fairly (but not completely) certain that the home isn’t haunted.

Not that
Architectural Digest •

Inside a Hyderabad home with traditional art and nostalgic heirlooms

As architects Nikhil Dev & Kaushik Abhinav recall, there was no brief to begin with, for this Hyderabad home. “It was pretty open-ended,” recalls Dev, one half of Hyderabad-based architecture studio Dev & Kaushik Architects, about the firm’s latest project, an India Modern duplex in the City of Pearls. The carte blanche was rooted in good reason. After all, the clients, a couple with two grown daughters, didn't really know what they wanted their home to look like, but they did know what they wan
Architectural Digest •

The “Stars Aligned” in This Family’s Dream LA Canyon Retreat

For furniture designer Reza Feiz and his wife, television producer Sheila Griffiths, moving to a bigger house had been in the cards for over a decade: “As the kids grew, their friends grew, their collection of instruments grew, we realized we needed a place where we could spread out a bit,” says Feiz, the founder of Phase Design, a Los Angeles–based studio that specializes in artisan-crafted furniture and objects. Mind you, the couple wasn’t keen on shifting just anywhere. They specifically had
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This Swedish Island Cottage Grows Out of the Woodland

This is a Stockholm story about the island of Torö, to be precise, although it begins on the mainland where one family—a couple and their kids, aged five and one, and one partner’s mother—is based. Tired of the city and desperate for a mid-pandemic respite, they set their sights on creating a year-round vacation home someplace slower, but in a sustainable, ecological, and cost-effective way. They found their answer in a 1970s two-bedroom cottage situated at the highest point in Torö, an isle on
Architectural Digest •

Mumbai: Swiss modernism and Japanese minimalism meet in this seafront apartment

When it came to organising the interior, Rangwala and Pirani, and their team—which included architects Shikha Mehta, Sakina Kothawala and Hussain Mukadam—worked backwards, assessing the spaces available and retrofitting them with special moments. Exhibit A: the living room, which seemingly rings with euphony, thanks to the grand piano that inhabits one corner. Most evenings, it is summoned to life by father or daughter, both equally adept at the clavichord, and when it isn't, it affords interlud
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