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Architectural Digest India •

This bungalow in Bengaluru is an ode to its owners’ roots in Kerala

Being from one place and living in another is a fate unwittingly bestowed upon many urban dwellers, whose jobs, fortunately or unfortunately, keep them tethered to the pace and frenzy of big-city life. It was no different for one Bengaluru couple, Malayalis by heritage, not birth, whose upbringing across various Indian cities left them yearning to reconnect with their roots—at least mentally. They reflected on their calling through conversation and contemplation; then, still feeling none the wis...
Architectural Digest India •

This Mumbai apartment is an Aladdin’s cave of gleaming treasures

The thing about being empty nesters is that you begin to see things in a new light—corners of the home you never really noticed, a wall that seems emptier than it used to, and rooms that suddenly feel too quiet, like they’re waiting for the next burst of life. When their sons flew the coop and moved to the U.S. a few years ago, Mumbai couple Chetan and Falguni Shah had a similar revelation. They’d lived in their Kandivali West apartment in Mumbai for over twenty years, and it was a home they and their boys knew well—so well that the Shahs decided, with the junior members gone, that it was time for a change. “Over the years, we hadn’t changed much from the original design, just a few minor tweaks here and there. With the boys away, the space had become more of a retreat for the two of us, and we felt it was time for a much-needed update,” says Chetan, though by we, what he really means is she. “In our family, whatever Falguni says goes—she has a much better eye for design, and I was more than happy to leave those decisions to her.” As for Falguni, she entrusted the project to interior designers Nidhi Shetty and Nidhi Chawla of Mumbai-based Dusq Studio to help bring her—nay, their—vision to life.
The Local Project •

Inside Peter Frampton’s Humble Tennessee Home

Tucked away in a pastoral pocket of Nashville, Tennessee, rock musician Peter Frampton’s farmhouse is a dreamscape of hushed hues and accessible design.
Designed by friend and interior designer Robin Rains, the home is customised to meet the needs of the music star, who lives with inclusion body myositis (IBM), impacting his movement and mobility. When Robin took on the redesign, the home had just been built and was a blank canvas. However, it needed to be updated to meet Frampton’s needs. “When...
Architectural Digest India •

This bungalow in Karnataka’s Kundapur reimagines the ancestral home that stood before it

When it came to the interior design, the Shettys expected the bare minimum. They wanted simple layouts, minimum furniture, and little to no decor for their bungalow in Karnataka. Their prudence, however, made an exception for the sun, which they wanted in abundance, and the kitchen and entertaining areas, which they wanted large. Of course, as Suchith’s wife, Vasavi, explains, not everything went according to plan. “We got a big surprise the day we walked in when we saw brick walls in the living...
The Local Project •

Light Well House by Simone Haag

In modernising the home, Simone remained faithful to its heritage. “There isn’t a plaster wall in the house. It’s all brick or timber veneer,” she notes. In addition to the walls, she also retained the original tiled benchtops in the kitchen, quaint basins in the bathrooms and vintage tapware fittings in both. “In terms of materials, the emphasis was on authenticity and honesty,” she adds. Her materials of choice were natural and organic, including wool, brick, timber, glass, leather, stone and...
Clever by Architectural Digest •

An Interior Designer’s LA Spanish Revival Evokes Her “Offbeat Chic” Aesthetic

Interior designer Julia Sobrepeña King is a firm believer in enjoying the chaos before the calm. “I’m an obsessive researcher, so I end up having to sort through lots of ideas and images before choosing a direction,” admits the AD PRO Directory member and founder of LA- and San Francisco–based full-service design firm Studio Roene. But last year, when it came time to redesign her 1920s pied-à-terre in LA’s Carthay Square, the frenzy, admittedly, reached a new standard of epic proportions for the...
The Local Project •

Holbrooke House by Brahman Perera

As for what prompted the owners to enlist an interior designer for a new build, Perera explains that it was a matter of taming its proportions. “The clients had experience in renovating property in the past but wanted me to develop a design language to soften the build,” he says. Though he was given carte blanche over the design, the owners did specify a caveat: to maximise the use of available space. “This was to be the family’s ‘forever home’, and thus a place that would grow with them and the...
The Local Project •

Linsley by Duet

In collaboration with Robert Lee Architects, Shlom and Brammah worked on reviving historic elements. Design interventions were dictated by heritage regulations, which specified the preservation of such original features as the copper wash tub, the stove in the underground sandstone kitchen, the staircase, bannisters and high ceilings. To afford these elements permanent pride of place, any new millwork was designed to be portable, allowing it to be replaced or removed as required.
As Shlom and Br...
Architectural Digest India •

This 3,500-square-foot bungalow in Kerala’s Karunagappally is an oasis in nature

Everyone in Karunagappally, Kerala, a bustling municipality in Kollam just shy of two hours by road from Alleppey, has a story to share about the town. Wise elders will proudly recall seeing the making of the first ever kettuvallam, a traditional barge invented in Karunagappally, known for its idiosyncratic thatched covers. Their children will tell you about the Sree Narayana Trophy boat race, a spectacular backwater competition held every Onam, where colourful snake boats, decorated with silk u...
Architectural Digest •

A 1960s Arkansas Bungalow Gets a Cinematic Glow-Up

Ten years ago, Anna E. Cottrell walked into a hillside home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and knew in her bones that it was the one. She didn’t mind that the bungalow was a circa-1961 build, or that it hadn’t been restored for decades. “I immediately felt a very cool California vibe,” the creative director recalls.“I could imagine myself being happy and inspired here. The black concrete floors, clean lines, and floor-to-ceiling windows that wash the space in natural light really sealed the deal.” F...
Architectural Digest •

This Memphis Home Is the Picture of Eternal Spring

Anyone who knows David Quarles, whether in person or through his brilliantly bohemian Instagram account, will tell you that the Memphis-based interior designer loves living his life in technicolor. “I’m a synesthete,” David says of his preternatural talent. “I see sound and hear color.” Which is why, when he meets clients for the very first time, the first thing he does is ask them their favorite songs. “It comes in especially handy when they can’t express how they want their space to feel or lo...
The Wall Street Journal •

She Wanted Manhattan in Montana. Her $350,000 Green-Velvet Den Delivered.

Manhattan in the mountains—that was the dream for Christina Robins, 38 and her husband, biotech entrepreneur Harlan Robins, 51. So when the Washington-based couple bought a parcel of land in Big Sky, Mont., in 2020, they wasted no time creating a retreat that embodied the glitz and glamour of New York, with help from Jackson Contractor Group, Kelly & Stone Architects and interior-design studio Alder and Tweed.
Architectural Digest India •

AD Small Spaces: An 800-square-foot childhood home morphs into a newly-wed nest

On paper, the idea was great; in reality, not so much. The Prabhadevi abode, after all, had served another version of herself, a younger version, and the aesthetic, now, “just didn’t scream us,” says Lodha, the us in question being herself and husband, digital marketing strategist Pushkarraj Mehta. To give it a voice that did, she turned to architect and interior designer Rochelle Santimano of Goa-based Studio Praia, whom she met through a mutual friend—though Santimano admits she hemmed and haw...
Architectural Digest •

A Midcentury Aesthetic Brings Out the Best in This Circa-1900 Apartment

Meet Ukrainian fashion director Gennadii Pyvovar, and it’s hard to believe that he has experienced—and continues to experience—the hardships of war. He leads an active social life, never misses a day of work, and fearlessly lives in Kyiv’s historic city center, close to cultural and architectural landmarks like the Kyiv Opera House, the National Museum of Natural History, and the Saint Sophia Cathedral, among many others. “It’s what keeps me going, the routine,” says Gennadii, who created his ne...
Vogue •

This new art show in Hyderabad looks like fashion, design and art had a love child

A woolly cocoon encrusted in crystals and stones adorns a wall. A preternatural pillar guards another. In between, stand bronze men with lunar bodies and no heads, still living and breathing. No, this isn’t a scene from a sci-fi movie, though if the selection on display is anything to go by, it’s every bit as theatrical. Welcome to Currents, a salon series and the maiden Hyderabad outpost of New York-born, New Delhi-based art gallery Nature Morte, unveiled in collaboration with Hetero Pharma Gro...
Domino •

At This Off-Grid Mexico Retreat, Giant Boulders Are Stepping Stones Between Rooms

Most Sardinians would argue that you can take the person out of Sardinia, but you can’t take Sardinia out of the person. Jasmine Scalesciani-Hawken is living proof. The half-Italian, half-Argentine interior designer and wellness coach grew up spending part of her summers in the wild hinterlands of Sardinia, Italy, in a house designed by the architect Alberto Ponis, who famously weaved the rocky landscape into his buildings. Mix in trips to Punta Del Este, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, and it should...
Architectural Digest India •

‘Thank you God’ singer 76th-floor’s 76th-floor Mumbai apartment is an oasis of calm

Any designer will tell you that the job comes with occupational hazards, but none in recent history has reported oxygen deprivation as being one of them. For singer Dhvani Bhanushali's new home however, AD100 interior designer Darshini Shah may or may not have run out of breath, as much from exceeding her clients’ expectations as from being on the 76th-floor of a Mumbai skyrise. “It took us a while to figure out why everyone got a headache on site only to realise that the low oxygen levels at th...
The Wall Street Journal •

A $220,000 Pink Dining Room Took Their Entertaining Game to the Next Level

As avid hosts with a taste for the unconventional, one California couple, a developer and a stay-at-home mom, both in their 50s, always dreamed of owning a wild and whimsical home. They bought a parcel of land in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 2017 for $10.1 million, and gave interior designer Adam Hunter directions with a far-from-simple expectation: create a space that was magical and inviting, with a spotlight on the dining room, which they imagined as a gathering place for family and friends.
Architectural Digest India •

This 6,000-square-foot apartment in Gurugram is a modern monochrome masterpiece

Designing a home, and then redesigning it years later, can throw even the niftiest of interior designers into a creative conundrum. For an apartment in Gurugram, however, product and interior designer Saba Kapoor of New Delhi design studio Nivasa was entrusted to overhaul a space the firm had designed almost two decades prior - and she was thrown, instead, down a different kind of rabbit hole. “It was the positive kind,” she insists when asked whether good or bad—the kind where she took inspira...
Architectural Digest India •

This 4,500-square-foot villa in Chennai harks back to the Allepey backwaters in Kerala

Memories are a funny thing. At this villa in Chennai, they linger as fleeting shadows in your mind, creeping up when you least expect them—in the whiff of a grandfather’s long-ago Old Spice; in aluminium tins of still-sealed packets of Parle-G and potato wafers on high kitchen shelves, closed so tight that they can scarcely be opened; or, as in the case of one family in Chennai’s Defence Colony, in the gentle creak of a lone wooden swing. “It’s their favourite—and mine,” shares interior designer...
Architectural Digest India •

This tropical modern villa in Chennai winks to its seaside locale

The thing about moving from one country to another, more often than not, is that there are some things you will miss and some things you won’t. “The things you won’t are never as memorable as the things you will,” jests architect Raghuveer Ramesh, one half of Chennai-based architecture practice Studio Context. He would know—if not first-hand, at least by virtue of his latest project, which involved designing a beachside villa in Chennai for a multigenerational family that had lived for three decades in the American countryside. “When they moved back to Chennai, they wanted their children to connect with their roots while also enjoying the same sense of space they had previously enjoyed.” The expectation was simple—to design a large, airy and light-filled house that looked out to nature—but the execution, not so much. “We’ve always designed more compact spaces in dense urban settings, so constructing a house on a plot of 12,000 square feet, with gardens and sufficient outdoor circulation areas, took some thinking,” concedes architect Sharanya Srinivasan, Studio Context’s other half.
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...
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