Elle Decor

The thing about designing a house that lets the elements in and everything else out is knowing where to draw the line. Ace architect Abin Chaudhuri of Kolkata-based Abin Design Studio is no stranger to such predicaments, having made a career out of drawing lines — literally and figuratively. In 2022, when he took up the reins for a 20,500-square-foot home for a family of five in Kolkata’s plush New Alipur, the first thing he did was draw a line to distinguish indoors from outdoors. Or, as he puts a finer point on the subject, “Find a way to ensure ample natural light and ventilation, while ensuring privacy from prying eyes.” The solution, it seemed, was simple: if he couldn’t take the indoors out, at least he could bring the outdoors in. By keeping the home at one with the landscape, maybe he could camouflage the interior to make it seem invisible from the outside.

Architect and interior designer Shonan Purie Trehan has a flair for stepping off the beaten path, as much at work as in the wilderness, and sometimes, if the stars align just so, in both together at once. “We first met while training for a fifty kilometre Oxfam walk in the wilderness,” shares the founder and principal of Mumbai-based full-service design practice LABwerk, the we in question being herself and Vadodara-based couple Shalini and Anand Raghavan. “Walking led to talking and we really got to know each other,” adds Shonan. The kinship endured long after the training was over, and yet beyond the course of the next year, so that when it came time for the Raghavans to entrust someone to build a home to their liking in their hometown in Gujarat, the compass pointed towards Shonan.

One site. Two halves. Three important considerations. That was how Abhimanyu Dalal approached a farmhouse project in New Delhi. “We decided right away to divide the property down the middle to place the house at one end,” says the veteran architect and founder of his eponymous New Delhi-based practice Abhimanyu Dalal Architects. He collaborated with former EDIDA winner Vritima Wadhwa of Project 810 for the interior design of the strikingly contemporary home with its roofs silhouetted against the sky. “We imagined a house on one end and landscape on the other. Nothing in between,” he adds. The composition of the various architectural elements took into account not only the owners’ art collection but more importantly, the light, greenery and the surrounding vistas. Floor-to-ceiling windows, some double height, are a defining feature that extend the architecture outwards. Given that one of the owners, a renowned gallerist, had a penchant for art, and already had an enviable collection, the second consideration was designing a setting that created a dialogue with the spaces. And the third was ensuring that the place felt natural to the family, as if they’d known and loved it all along.

The thing about sea-facing abodes, as some designers might argue, is that attempting to equal or exceed the view is a rather impractical folly. So impractical, that when it came to designing a coastal aerie in Mumbai’s Lower Parel, architects Anand Deshmukh and Chetan Lahoti of Pune-based multidisciplinary practice Mind Manifestation Design decided to simply opt out of said zero sum game by extending the view indoors. “We imagined the interior as a sun-warmed beach, like something the tide could have washed ashore,” says Anand.

In the past decade or so, the term ‘wabi-sabi’ has been discussed — and demonstrated — with wild abandon. A dining table with a dent? Wabi-sabi. A chair without a back? Wabi-sabi. A lopsided lamp? If it can’t be straightened, wabi-sabi. As the term has gained currency, more out of convenience than a resolve for cultivation, the Japanese concept, which references a Weltanschauung of finding beauty in imperfections, has been distilled beyond recognition by all but a few. A proud member of that minority is architect-designer extraordinaire Ashiesh Shah, the powerhouse behind the eponymous Mumbai-based atelier, who has long been a standard-bearer of the increasingly du jour concept of minimalist design, reimagining Wabi-sabi as an aesthetic paragon equally inspired by the practical and the poetic.

Few interior designers can walk into a home and arrive at a vision by the time they walk out. But then again, few interior designers are Iram Sultan. The NCR-based design doyen demonstrated a particular kind of sorcery for a project in the capital a few years ago, when she was commissioned by a multigenerational family — comprising two sets of brothers, their respective wives and children, and their parents — to redesign their two-storey, 21,000 sq ft bungalow. “When I met them, I came to a firm conclusion. These were all fascinating individuals with distinct identities, but they were bound together like yarn,” recalls the principal and founder of her eponymous Gurugram-headquartered interior design studio. It was a discovery that led her to an instinctual point of departure, reflecting an aesthetic lexicon that has, in recent years, been galvanised by a magpie-like second sight for spotting the beauty in things long before others. Evidently, this home was no exception.

For architect Rooshad Shroff, there are few things greater than a blank canvas. So was the case a few years ago, when he took on the design reins for a new project in Mumbai’s Worli — a 3,500 sq ft seafront apartment, created by combining three neighbouring sea-facing flats. Except, unlike his other projects, this one posed a conundrum or three. “Originally built as a hotel, the building had a very strange layout, terribly low ceilings and ceiling beams that zigzagged across the interior,” shares Rooshad, the founder and principal of his namesake Mumbai-based multidisciplinary firm, whose team also included architect Shonit Kotian. Downsizing from seven bedrooms to two produced another predicament for the architect, who additionally conceived the blueprint to include formal and informal living rooms, a dining room, a study, a gym and a den. The incongruent ceiling beams weren’t just a cosmetic curiosity, they were also a tad too low for their rather tall owner, a gentleman for whom the home was emblematic of a new beginning.

In New Delhi’s Chhatarpur, where verdant lanes and fortress-like facades are par for the course, there’s a 12,000-square-foot weekend home that gives little away. As an urban farm turned weekend retreat, its fine details and natural materials exude a warm and earthy quality reminiscent of the landscape. And yet, its identity is entirely its own, with geometric shapes and organic forms that at once complement and contrast one another, conjuring the illusion of a larger-than-life sculpture. When designer Preeti Kaur, founder and principal of her Delhi-based design firm Studio Prefix, was enlisted to create the retreat for a family of three, the focus was on conjuring up a sanctum that echoed the natural environment. Courtesy of the original builder, two of the home’s three storeys were already in place when she took on the design reins. Her role was adding another and weaving the home into a cohesive whole.

When retired Sri Lankan cricketing legend Kumar Sangakkara and his wife, Yehali, purchased a villa in the island precinct of Galle Fort a few years ago, its state of disrepair was the last thing on their mind (the home was originally built as a residence in the fort and fortified by the Portuguese in the late 1500s, then subsequently captured by the Dutch in the 17th century). The first, was getting on board an interior designer who would match their sensibilities—a cinch, considering they already knew whom they wanted. Having worked with her on their Colombo home sixteen years prior, they were keen to rekindle a working relationship with Annika Fernando, founder and principal of Colombo-based multidisciplinary practice Annika Fernando Design. And so they did, trusting her to combine their vision with her own.

As I make my way up the Bahls’ garden path, past the lake and staff quarters and a trail of tiny ducks, a previously unseen tower slides into view, complete with a 200-year-old front door engraved with falcons that seem poised to spring to life. “It channels a brick kiln. It’s a little hat-tip to the once-upon-a-time pottery site that existed here,” says Samiir Wheaton, founder of Jaipur-based Wheaton Design, referencing the newly built tower, which evidently acts as the home’s axis. We’re seated at the bar counter, seven feet below ground level, where floor-to-ceiling glass windows frame the glistening garden beyond. And yet my attention is drawn inwards, to the massive volume before me.

Most weekends when they’re there, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Parinita Narain can be found on the katte (Kannada for ‘bench’) in the courtyard, sometimes with a friendly neighbour, always with some piping hot filter coffee. For the couple, such weekend sojourns are a regular occurrence — the happy result of a long-ago manifesto to escape the city more often, albeit on their own terms. “A weekend home was the obvious solution,” says Shalini Chandrashekar, Principal and Director of Bengaluru-based a

Moments before the jungle dissolves into the ocean in east Goa, is a home that crowns the cliffside. With the tide on one side and tropical undergrowth on the other, it serves as an interlude between the earth and the deep, tipping its hat to the sunshine and the shoreline in equal measure. Of course, its light and breezy air hasn't always been so. When Meetu Akali, founder and principal architect of Goa-based Studio Momo, first took up its (re)design reins, the charm of the 4,000-square-foot property — designed by veteran architect Dean D'Cruz in 2006 — had long faded. And its Bengaluru-based owners, who had purchased it as a holiday villa many years prior, couldn’t quite fathom its future.

When Mahek Lalan first stepped inside the 1,500 sq ft duplex apartment that was to be his next project, he was enchanted by its double-height volumes, semi-hexagonal bedroom balconies and abundance of sunlight. "It almost didn't feel real," recalls the founder and principal of Mumbai-based SML Architects about the top-floor apartment with three bedrooms in Navi Mumbai’s Belapur. Its architecture, executed in the late 1990s, was a departure from the Maximum City's matchbox-sized spaces. And for the architect, it was an opportunity to rewrite the (design) rulebook.

Most weekends when they’re there, Aprameya Radhakrishna and Parinita Narain can be found on the katte (Kannada for ‘bench’) in the courtyard, sometimes with a friendly neighbour, always with some piping hot filter coffee. For the couple, such weekend sojourns are a regular occurrence—the happy result of a long-ago manifesto to escape the city more often, albeit on their own terms. “A weekend home was the obvious solution,” says Shalini Chandrashekar, principal and director of Bangalore-based architecture and design practice Taliesyn (co-founded with architect Mahaboob Basha in 2007), who was tapped by the couple to breathe life into their recently acquired 3,800-square-foot plot in Bengaluru.

In New Delhi's Friends Colony, is a home that unfolds in phases. Each angle presents a different view, beckoning you to venture ever closer to uncover what lies within. And contrary to the ease with which this home navigates various vistas, its kaleidoscopic avatar is hardly happenstance. With interior designer Vaishali Kamdar at the helm, a volume with multiple vignettes was always a certainty. What was not was the sheer magic behind each. “I’ve always been fascinated by what you see when you’re looking at a home from the outside. I wanted glimmers of art, light and furniture to peep through and evoke moments of curiosity,” says Vaishali who is Founder and Principal of her eponymous Gurugram-based design studio. She was tapped by the homeowners, a couple with two teenage boys, to transform their newly built 6,500 sq ft New Delhi residence into an elegant, understated and inviting home.

On the twenty-third floor of a Worli highrise sits a 3,700 sq ft home that channels Back to the Future—if Back to the Future took a detour from the past. The part-trad, part-tony aesthetic is no small coincidence. "Far from it," smiles Ali Baldiwala, Interior Designer and Partner at Mumbai-based Baldiwala Edge, who was tasked with facelifting the home’s living room, dining room, kitchen, den and four bedrooms. "With three generations under one roof, the main challenge was honouring each member's tastes and preferences,” he suggests of the family, composed of a 50-something couple, their grown-up children and the husband’s mother. So much so, that the brief he received wasn’t a brief at all, but rather individual memos from each member, describing what they wanted for their respective space. Despite their aesthetic differences though, the family was united about one thing: that their art and collectibles be given pride of place. “It’s the very first thing they mentioned to me, so I knew we had to plan the house in a way that let their collections shine,” he shares.