[Print] Flock in Fresco: Mumbai Home by MuseLAB
Most people count sheep when they’re trying to fall asleep. Priyanka Thaker of House of Beserk counts them when she’s trying not to. Not too many moons ago, while painting the ceiling of an apartment designed by Mumbai-based studio MuseLAB, the Ahmedabad-based multidisciplinary art practitioner began slipping tiny, secret sheep into the composition — her own woolly pressure valve. “Every time someone walked in and asked a question about this motif or that, she’d get really agitated,” says Huzefa Rangwala, one half of the studio. “And out would come another sheep.” To be fair, painting the underside of a structural slab while answering a running commentary from the room below is enough to make anyone see sheep — although Huzefa and the firm’s other half, Jasem Pirani, evidently, had their own flock of challenges to contend with. The apartment in question, situated in Mumbai and measuring 4,500 square feet, began life rather differently. Originally a linear five-bedroom home, its elongated plan was heavy on corridors and light on delight. The brief was radical: pare it down to a generous two-bedroom residence—with a lounge, living and dining areas, a bar and a kitchen — while ensuring the space felt anything but pared back. “It was a long, stretched-out layout,” recalls Huzefa. “The question was: how do you make the in-between spaces exciting rather than merely functional?”
