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Architectural Digest India •

This tropical modern villa in Chennai winks to its seaside locale

Also read: A 2,500-square-foot family home in Chennai swears by the Danish concept of HyggeIf the brooding facade is anything to go by, it’s safe to assume that the architects reserved the vistas for the interior alone. “It doesn’t give too much away at first,” Raghuveer notes of the dwelling, located on Chennai’s East Coast Road, although “too much” might be a bit of an understatement—or overstatement, depending on which way you look at it. The exterior walls are plain and high, offset only by...
Architectural Digest India •

Bindoo by Kumar La Noce gives Indio-Italian heritage a centre stage in Milan

Altreforme is an offshoot of Fontana Group, the producer of avant-garde aluminium parts for luxury car brands like Ferrari, Rolls Royce, and Jaguar. The collection is therefore born from the same know-how and technology, sculpted from the same aluminium as said automobiles, and even shares with them a production facility.Kumar admits that the design process was equal parts visceral and cerebral, and that it took months of work, technical drawings, 3D modelling, and colour studies to realize the...
Architectural Digest India •

This timeless bungalow in Kerala’s Thrissur is a moody and monastic oasis

A brief by any other name is still a brief, even if it evokes more questions than answers. Fortunately, architects Arun Shekar and Mohammed Afnan, by their own admission, have always been the nosy kind, so when it came to designing a brief-less bungalow in Kerala (Thrissur), the principals and co-founders of Kozhikode-based AD100 design practice Humming Tree weren’t afraid to ask questions. “To be fair, there was a brief. It just wasn’t very helpful,” deadpans Shekar. The prompt from the owners,...
Clever by Architectural Digest •

A Circa-1915 Minnesota Kitchen Steps Into the Light

“Dinged-up.” That’s how Cheryl and Cody recall the condition of their circa-1915 St. Paul, Minnesota, bungalow the first time they set foot inside a few years ago. Nonetheless, the couple—who share two kids, a dog, and some chickens—deemed it not too shabby. They saw it as an upgrade from their existing 900-square-foot condo and the perfect size for their growing brood. Convinced it was the right move, the couple decided to call off all bets and make an offer. “We loved the historic charm of the...
Clever by Architectural Digest •

A “Haunted” 860-Square-Foot Casita in Spain Gets a Colorful Second Life

Antonio Montilla isn’t scared of ghosts. “I’m intrigued by strange things,” admits the Spanish-born, London-based architect and furniture designer, who put his spooky side on show last year when scouting around for a pied-à-terre in Marbella, Spain. “The estate agent called it the ‘Horror House,’” he says of his current abode. “Apparently no one would spend longer than five minutes inside.” So obviously, he set out to be the exception. The longer-than-five-minute search paid off, because it gave...
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: How to use bold colours for a home under 600-square-foot

It’s a good thing Michal gave Anna free rein over the design, because if he hadn’t, the interior would probably have looked a whole lot different. It would have been minimalist, classic, and white—basically, everything the present version isn’t. “Believe it or not, in the preliminary concept, we had a white resin floor, white walls and ceilings, a white resin bathroom, and plain oak veneer on all the furniture,” muses Anna, adding that her first job was to prove to Michal that dark walls don’t s...
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: This 340-square-foot New York apartment is full of storage

The architect Andrew Magnes likes to think he knows his New York neighbours, but it took him a soup-to-nuts home remodel for a long-time friend—a whole neighbourhood away—to realize he might not know some as well as others. “Or not at all,” says the founder and principal of his Brooklyn-based architecture firm (AMA). “When it was time to bid out the project [to a general contractor], we came across Petro Benedyk from Stroybat. I had never met Petro, and I remember receiving his proposal and seei...
Architectural Digest India •

Makaan by Tahir Sultan is filled with 200-year-old urns and other rare curiosities

The store is as whimsical as the objects that inhabit it. Old rusted sewage pipes—found and saved several years ago—masquerade as art installations beside artisanal clay pots of Sultan’s own design. Cardboard boxes and bamboo laddersdisplay artwork and vases. Old boxes of incense find new life as pedestals. “People come to Makaan for the experience,” reflects Sultan, who refreshed the aesthetic lexicon last year to reveal its most soigné identity yet: think triple-height ceilings, black stone b...
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: This 900-square-foot Mumbai apartment is an escape from bustle of the city

Metros everywhere are plagued by common laments, laments that can often disappoint or discourage those from smaller towns from switching to a cloistered Mumbai apartment or a flat in Delhi. How Mumbai-based Neha Prasad and Shantanu Gupta remained immune to said phenomenon is a mystery even to them. The couple (they're both senior professionals at ed tech company upGrad), who had moved to Mumbai some years ago, had grown familiar with the perils of an urban existence, which they deemed exhausting...
Architectural Digest India •

[Print] Makaan by Tahir Sultan

The best things in life happen when you least expect them. So maintains Tahir Sultan, the Jaipur-based designer who brought to life a concept store, Makaan, on the very heels of COVID. “I didn’t have a vision when I started,” reflects the Kuwait-born entrepreneur, who put down roots in the Pink City during the lockdown. “I wanted to open a store, but I didn't know where. One day, a friend of my mother’s suggested a house nearby, and said the owner would be happy to rent it to me. But the place had seen better days, and there was just something about it that seemed improbable,” recalls Sultan, before taking a breath, “but not so improbable that I couldn’t make it work.”
Architectural Digest India •

[Print] Bindoo: Through the Looking Glass

What’s the next best thing to owning a Ferrari? If you ask architects Bhavana Kumar and Nicola La Noce of Indo-Italian design practice Kumar La Noce, it’s owning a mirror—or three. The pair’s most recent labour of love, a trifecta of geometric mirrors christened Bindoo, created in collaboration with Italian high-end aluminium furniture company altreforme (an offshoot of Fontana Group, the producer of avant-garde aluminium parts for such luxury car brands as Ferrari, Rolls Royce and Jaguar), is born from the same know-how and technology, and sculpted from the same aluminium, as said automobiles and even shares with them a production facility.
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: This 900-square-foot apartment in Bengaluru is a Japandi-chic oasis

Saurin Shah is a stickler for perfection. “He is rather particular,” concedes his wife, Jimi, who was witness to said perfectionism, for better or worse, during the making of the couple’s first apartment in Bengaluru in Whitefield. The brief was simple. What wasn't was the expectation, which, as Jimi tells it, specified “a simple, minimalist, and highly accessible design with all sorts of storage, from small cubbies for paper bags to big compartments for suitcases. All in minimum occupied space,...
Clever by Architectural Digest •

Inside a Century-Old LA Home Where the Sun Never Seems to Set

If there’s one thing Alex Anderson and Aaron Kravitz swear by, it’s the power of instinct. Ask the couple how they came to be Angelenos and they explain that it was thanks to a stroke of serendipity. “We never meant to move,” says Alex, who works in the creative field. “We started our home search here for fun after feeling priced out in San Francisco.” All virtually, mind you.
Architectural Digest •

Step Inside an Oasis in Todos Santos, Mexico, Where Bold Colors and a Playful Spirit Rule the Day

Interior designer Faith Blakeney doesn’t believe in always doing things by the book. What she does believe in is kismet, and the notion that one’s stars, during any turning of the tide, align only briefly. Which explains why, on a trip some years ago to Todos Santos (a town on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula), she had zero qualms about flagging down a semitruck full of handmade furniture in 100-degree weather, mere moments after her client, a Belgian-born, LA-based, Oscar
Architectural Digest India •

Palinda Kannangara turns this 5-storey house in Colombo into a calming oasis

Those who know Colombo, deeply and intimately, can confirm two things to be true: that time here likes to stop for nobody, and that it's just as easy to get lost in the colours as in the clamour. “It's a vibrant place,” says Palinda Kannangara—so vibrant that its effect, evidently, seems to have worn off on the celebrated Colombo-based architect. That is, if his latest residential project is anything to go by. Situated in the heart of the Sri Lankan capital, just strides away from the Cinnamon Gardens and the candy cane-striped Jami-Ul-Alfar Mosque, the dwelling, designed as a white column that rises towards the sky, is a quiet antithesis to the surrounding smorgasbord of colour.
Architectural Digest India •

This glorious heritage hotel in Udaipur basks in the glow of the City Palace

When Kapoor stepped in for the redesign, there was, as she explains, “nothing terribly wrong with the place.” At first, anyway. “But then we noticed water from the lake had seeped through in places, and of course, some of the layouts needed optimising,” reflects the founder and principal of Mumbai-based Noorein Kapoor Design, who was entrusted to revitalise the lower level of the restaurant, the al fresco patio and bar, as well as the rooms by rotation. What didn’t need optimising, mind you, was
Clever by Architectural Digest •

This Eclectic London Home Nods to Its Owner’s Greek Heritage

James Arkoulis doesn’t take no for an answer, at least not in matters regarding his home. When the London-based interior designer and cofounder of interior design studio Howark Design couldn’t find a bathtub to his satisfaction, he decided to design one himself, lying supine day after day in an attempt to paint on the perfect floral details. The bathtub, of course, is merely a metaphor for his mind. He admits he never tires of reinventing, as was the case during the remodel of his and his husban
Architectural Digest India •

This 1,200-square-foot Nagpur home brims with secret storage

There’s little not to love about balconies, especially the one at this Nagpur home; cool winds on hot days, sunset views, or, as in the case of entrepreneurs Mayuri and Vivek Patil, storage space for their 50-pair collection of Air Jordans. “Finding them a home was the top priority,” says architect Saniya Jejani Lohar, one-half of Nashik-based design practice LADLAB (her husband and co-founder, architect Sagar Lohar, makes up the other half). “And, for a home of just 1,200 square feet, the balco
Architectural Digest •

This 590-Square-Foot Apartment in Poland Is a Midnight Blue Dream

Michal Pacułt has a knack for making the best of a bad bargain. When the Polish entrepreneur bought his first apartment (a 350-square-foot pad on the third floor of a Kraków high-rise), it didn’t matter that it was a tad too low for his liking. He reasoned that it was a matter of time before he moved some place higher (and happier). So when he found a top-floor flat in the same building not long after, he discounted its shortcomings and purchased it anyway.

Michal soon discovered surprises he h
Architectural Digest India •

Inside a 1940s ancestral haveli in Rajasthan, the past and present effortlessly intertwine

Reincarnating the haveli in Rajasthan didn’t mean reversing its past, not in Shah's mind anyway. And he was mindful about entrusting the remodel to someone who would honour its history. That someone was designer Virti Vora of Ahmedabad-based design practice Indetales, to whom Shah was introduced via mutual acquaintances. He gave her carte blanche over the design process because as he puts a finer point on the subject, “it was already a challenging task given the age of the building and the limit
Architectural Digest India •

At this 10,000-square-foot sea-view home in Mumbai, the horizon takes centre stage

Its bones may be contemporary but its spirit is not, at least not all the way, for this sea-view home in Mumbai. The puja room cuts a decidedly India Modern figure with traditional inscriptions, statues and reliefs, but it’s the floor, Talati reveals, that is the real star. “It breathes life into this room,” he says, referencing the floral leitmotifs that suggest the experience of natural mogras being thrown onto the floor. Composed of four tones, the mother-of-pearl flooring lends an opalescent
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: Tour a vintage 753-square-foot apartment in Rome from the 1960s

Italian interior designer Mirta Ottaviani is all for bringing a home into the present, but not at the cost of undoing its past, especially if said past includes framed vintage Vogue covers and a floor of entirely pink Portuguese marble. “Those are honestly the first things I noticed,” says Mirta of the 753-square-foot 1960s apartment in Rome’s Farnesina district she was recently entrusted to redesign, admitting, “I just couldn’t take my eyes off them.” As she later learned, she didn’t need to. T
Clever by Architectural Digest •

This 753-Square-Foot Apartment in Rome Is a Mediterranean Oasis

Italian interior designer Mirta Ottaviani is all for bringing a home into the present, but not at the cost of undoing its past, especially if said past includes framed vintage Vogue covers and a floor of entirely pink Portuguese marble. “Those are honestly the first things I noticed,” says Mirta of the 753-square-foot 1960s apartment in Rome’s Farnesina district she was recently entrusted to redesign, admitting, “I just couldn’t take my eyes off them.” As she later learned, she didn’t need to. T
Architectural Digest •

Step Inside a 1920s Seattle Abode Reborn as a Soothing Sanctuary

Sometimes it’s a home’s past, rather than its present, that inspires a family to make it their own. Jaison and Jamie Robinson would be the first to agree. When the real estate entrepreneur and the founder of Electing Women Seattle (a network committed to engaging women in the political process and electing more women Democrats) first set foot inside this 1920s Seattle home, originally designed by architect Elizabeth Ayer—one of the first female graduates of the University of Washington’s archite
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