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      Studio Lotus wraps stone lattices around museum-cum-jewellery store in Jaipur

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      New Delhi practice Studio Lotus has used stone lattices and frescoes depicting regional architecture to embellish the Museum of Meenakari Heritage and Sunita Shekhawat jewellery store in India.

      Designed as the flagship store for Sunita Shekhawat’s eponymous jewellery brand in Jaipur, the building contains a museum focused on the craft of Meenakari on its ground floor.
      Studio Lotus designed the museum-cum-store for the brandAccording to Studio Lotus, it aimed to “foster an environment where the act of purchasing jewellery is not the primary goal”, but instead becomes a “natural conclusion of a transformative experience”.
      “The underlying emotion behind the Meenakari museum – the first of its kind – becomes the client’s way of paying homage to the city that has given her so much, while also establishing a novel paradigm in luxury retail design,” the team explained.
      Multiple historic influences shape the design language of the buildingWorking within the structure of a partially complete building on the site, Studio Lotus created bevelled balconies to produce a form that “intricately layers patterns and details and draw from different periods, woven together into one cohesive image”.

      The details and lattices take cues from historic influences such as Rajputana, Mughal, and Art Deco – as a nod to the city’s architecture and Shekhawat’s approach to jewellery design.
      The store was place in on the lower ground floorShekhawat uses Meenakari, or the art of enamelling metal, as the foundation of her jewellery work.
      To reflect this, Studio Lotus convinced Shekhawat to create a museum or “storytelling space” that presents the history of Meenakari craftsmanship on the ground floor, in a space that was originally earmarked for the store.

      Studio Saar looks to Indian architecture for cultural centre in Rajasthan

      “We seized this challenge as an opportunity to create a narrative gallery,” Studio Lotus founder Ambrish Arora told Dezeen.
      “In collaboration with Usha Balakrishnan and Siddhartha Das Studio, we were able to create or, rather, open up the world of enamelling from different perspectives for the visitor.”
      The semi-vaulted ceilings feature frescoesThe store was placed below, on the lower ground floor, with a gallery space clad in an off-white araish lime stucco surrounded by private pods designed for one-on-one client interactions.
      Arora explained that the wide floorplate and tall ceilings of the lower ground floor “lends itself well to the exclusive, by-appointment-only, bespoke nature of the business, and of the product too — the lack of natural light being conducive to the controlled lighting necessary for jewellery display”.
      A curved staircase leads to the storeThe semi-vaulted ceilings of the pods are adorned with frescoes by artists specialising in miniature paintings, which depict the region’s architecture, flora and fauna.
      The practice commissioned CraftCanvas, a collective of artisan communities in India, to develop the frescoes. The scale and curved profile of the ceilings proved to be a challenge for the artists.
      “It took repeated trial and error and a commitment, collaboratively, to reach a certain benchmark,” said Arora..
      Individual rooms were designed for client meetingsAll of the floors within the building are connected by sculptural staircase at the centre of the building.
      Shekhawat’s office and design studio are located on the first floor, while a restaurant and bar is planned for the top floor, which has views across the city.
      This floor was wrapped in glazing and shaded by stone lattices, which was designed to “respond to the inward-looking program on the lower floors”.

      Folded stone lattices filter sunlight into the upper space that is planned as a restaurantThe exterior of the building was clad in Jodhpur red sandstone, paying homage to Shekhawat’s hometown and in line with the colour scheme of Jaipur’s – or the Pink City’s – buildings.
      According to the practice, it aimed to engage with local craftspeople throughout the construction process – from crafting the furniture inside the space to cladding the facade.
      Jodhpur red sandstone hand-carved by indigenous craftspeople features on the facadeStudio Lotus was founded in 2002 by Arora, Ankur Choksi and Sidhartha Talwar. The studio works on a wide range of cultural, residential, commercial and mixed-use projects – including a government building in India clad in intricate brickwork.
      Other Indian architecture projects recently published on Dezeen include a home in Hyderabad topped with a lantern-like roof and a set of six holiday homes in Goa defined by peach-toned walls and arched openings.
      The photography is by Ishita Sitwala

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      V&A’s Tropical Modernism exhibition explores “the politics behind the concrete”

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      London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has launched its Tropical Modernism exhibition, which highlights the architectural movement’s evolution from colonial import to a “tool of nation building”.

      According to the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), the exhibition aims to examine the complex context, power dynamics and post-colonial legacy of tropical modernism – an architectural style that developed in South Asia and West Africa in the late 1940s – while also centralising and celebrating its hidden figures.
      London’s V&A museum has opened a major exhibition exploring tropical modernism”Tropical modernism is experiencing something of a modish revival as an exotic and escapist style popular in verdant luxury hotels, bars and concrete jungle houses,” the exhibition’s lead curator Christopher Turner told Dezeen.
      “But it has a problematic history and, through an examination of the context of British imperialism and the de-colonial struggle, the exhibition seeks to look at the history of tropical modernism before and after Independence, and show something of the politics behind the concrete,” he continued.
      The exhibition traces the evolution of tropical modernism within a South Asian and West African contextThe exhibition follows the V&A’s Tropical Modernism exhibition at the 2023 Venice Biennale, which revealed the team’s precursory research on tropical modernism in a West African setting.

      For the in-house iteration of the exhibition, additional architectural models, drawings and archival imagery have been introduced to interrogate tropical modernism in India alongside the African perspective.
      Exhibition materials line a series of rooms within the V&A’s Porter Gallery, divided by brightly coloured partitions and louvred walls referencing tropical modernist motifs.
      Archival imagery, architectural drawings and physical models line the gallery roomsThe exhibition begins by tracing tropical modernism back to its early development by British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. Stationed together in Ghana from 1944, Drew and Fry adapted international modernism to the African climate, proposing functional over ornamental design.
      Drew and Fry would also become part of the Department of Tropical Studies at the Architectural Association (AA), which exported British architects to the colonies from 1954 in a bid to neutralise calls for independence.
      The exhibition aims to centralise local professionals who have gone widely unrecognised for their contributions to the movementThe exhibition continues by spotlighting local Ghanaian figures who worked with Fry and Drew, noting the power shifts that were taking place behind the scenes to reappropriate the architectural style for an emerging era of colonial freedom.
      Influential political leaders Jawaharlal Nehru in India and Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana are the exhibition’s key personas, framing the evolution of tropical modernism from conception to regionalisation.
      Gallery rooms are divided by brightly coloured partitions informed by tropical modernist motifs”The heroes of our exhibition are Nehru and Nkrumah, the first prime ministers of India and Ghana,” Turner explained. “Tropical modernism, a colonial invention, survived the transition to Independence and was appropriated and adapted by Nehru and Nkrumah as a tool of nation building.”
      “Nkrumah, who sometimes sketched designs for the buildings he wanted on napkins, created the first architecture school in sub-Saharan Africa to train a new generation of African architects, and this institution has partnered with us on a five-year research project into tropical modernism.”
      According to the V&A’s research, tropical modernism shifted from its western Bauhaus roots towards a localised vernacular stylesThrough a host of physical models and artefacts, the city of Chandigarh becomes the exhibition’s narrative focal point for tropical modernism in India.
      Under prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Chandigarh was the first large-scale modernist project, recruiting Drew and Fry along with French architect Le Corbusier to plan the ideal utopian urban centre.
      As with Nkrumah – who saw how the Africanisation of architecture could become a symbol of progress and change – the exhibition also aims to highlight Nehru’s ambitions for a localised modernism drawing from the Indian vernacular, rather than the Western Bauhaus style.

      Applied Arts Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale aims to “complicate the history of tropical modernism”

      The display culminates in a video featuring 16 key tropical modernist structures, interspersed with interviews and footage explaining the social and political context behind each building’s realisation.
      “We made a three-screen 28-minute film, shot in Ghana and featuring panoramic portraits of over a dozen buildings, cut with archive footage from the time and interviews with architects like John Owusu Addo and Henry Wellington, and Nkrumah’s daughter, the politician Samia Nkrumah,” said Turner.
      The exhibition aims to address gaps in the museum’s African and South Asian studiesAccording to Turner, the exhibition begins to address gaps in the V&A’s collections and archives pertaining to architecture and design in the global south.
      “Archives are themselves instruments of power, and West African and Indian architects are not as prominent in established archives, which many institutions have now realised and are working to address,” Turner explained.
      “Tropical modernism was very much a co-creation with local architects who we have sought to name – all of whom should be much better known, but are excluded from established canons.”
      The display will inhabit the V&A’s Porter Gallery until 22 September 2024Bringing tropical modernism back into contemporary discourse was also important to the V&A as a timely investigation of low-tech and passive design strategies.
      “Tropical modernism was a climate responsive architecture – it sought to work with rather than against climate,” Turner said.
      “As we face an era of climate change, it is important that tropical modernism’s scientifically informed principles of passive cooling are reexamined and reinvented for our age,” he added.
      “I hope that people will be interested to learn more about these moments of post-colonial excitement and opportunity, and the struggle by which these hard-earned freedoms were won.”
      A 28-minute video captures footage of remaining tropical modernist structures at the end of the exhibitionThe V&A museum in South Kensington houses permanent national collections alongside a series of temporary activations and exhibitions.
      As part of London Design Festival 2023, the museum hosted a furniture display crafted from an Alfa Romeo car by Andu Masebo and earlier in the year, architect Shahed Saleem created a pavilion in the shape of a mosque at the V&A as part of 2023’s Ramadan Festival.
      The photography is courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
      Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence will run from 2 March to 22 September 2024 at the V&A Museum in London. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design visit the Dezeen Events Guide.

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      WOA designs own studio space using materials that had been “relegated to landfill”

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      Indian architecture studio Workers of Art has converted a former storage space into its own plant-filled office, using recycled and repurposed waste materials in almost every aspect of its design.

      Called WOA Second Home, the office is located in Kochi, Kerala, and occupies a 1,450-square-foot (135-square-metre) concrete structure that was previously used for storing tiles.
      Aiming to “underscore the necessity of the curtailment of waste output in architecture,” Workers of Art (WOA) made use of materials that had been “relegated to landfill” including concrete board, PVC pipes and acrylic sheets, to create a workspace that would reflect the studio’s ethos.
      WOA has converted a former storage space into an office in Kerala”The design celebrates the value of materials that might have otherwise been discarded, creatively forming patterns and combining different elements to breathe new life into the space,” said the studio.
      “For instance, odd-shaped waste tiles are harmoniously mixed and matched, finding their new home in the powder room. A strikingly repurposed tile piece also elevates the entry steps, underscoring the studio’s attention to detail and innovative flair,” it added.

      Organised across one floor, the entrance to the office leads into a large space lined with a zig-zag of ferrocement desks along the eastern wall, next to a meeting table and sample board at the centre of the room and a more private workspace to the west.
      The design uses recycled and repurposed waste materialsA new partition with a large arched opening and blackout curtain leads through to a breakout area and facilities space containing a locker area, kitchen and bathroom.
      “The design of the workstations, which meander through the shared workspace, was strategically planned to encourage teamwork while also allowing for individual space,” WOA co-founder Priya Rose told Dezeen.
      “The philosophy was to create a workspace that feels like a ‘second home’ – evident in the thoughtful design elements that prioritise comfort, aesthetic pleasure, and a sense of belonging,” she added.

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      Custom black light fittings on the ceiling were created by repurposing lengths of PVC pipe, while bespoke planters were made using ferrocement lined with blue plastic barrels.
      The existing tile floor in the building was retained, with areas that had become cracked removed and infilled with microcement to create contrasting dark grey geometric areas.
      Throughout the studio, discarded antiques and over 100 species of local plants were introduced to bring a “homely” quality to the space.
      A large arched opening forms a new partition within the officeWOA Second Home has been shortlisted in the workplace interior (small) category of Dezeen Awards 2023.
      In Madrid, designer Lucas Muñoz used upcycled junk and construction waste to create nearly every interior element of the Mo de Movimiento restaurant.
      The photography is by Ishita Sitwala. 

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      Studio Hinge creates library spaces beneath tree-like wooden columns

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      Indian practice Studio Hinge has completed Forest of Knowledge, a library in Mumbai that sits beneath a tree-like canopy of latticed wood.

      The library was designed for the Cricket Club of India, a member’s club dating back to the 1930s that is housed in an art deco building in southern Mumbai.
      Columns were created to resemble tree trunksAdapting the third floor of this building, Studio Hinge looked to recreate the feeling of “sitting under a tree with a book” by reimagining the structure’s concrete columns as tree trunks.
      Alongside, a former Zumba studio has been updated to be used as a flexible space for book clubs, film screenings and workshops.
      Circular bookshelves sit underneath the “canopy””India experienced one of the harshest and most sudden covid lockdowns in the world, and a lot of the design of the library was developed during this time, during which it was clear that people were yearning to meet and share ideas in person again,” explained the studio.

      “On a conceptual level, the design draws from nature, in particular the notion of sitting under a tree with a book, and also borrows from the beautiful canopy formed by the ficus and gulmohar trees to be found in the adjacent street,” it continued.
      The shelves are connected by plank-covered steel framesA steel frame covered with small wooden planks lines each of the concrete columns.
      This integrates shelving and extends upwards to create arched forms across the ceiling that are then connected in areas with a wooden lattice.

      The Act of Quad converts Mumbai shed into studio with see-through facade

      Curving bookshelves have been organised in a circle at the base of each column, with seating areas at the edges of the floor plate creating a variety of different conditions and atmospheres for visitors.
      On the library’s floor, custom terrazzo tiles feature a pattern of green “leaves” with a circle of wooden flooring used at the base of each column.
      The floor was decorated with a leaf pattern”Care has been taken to ensure no bookshelf in the open space is taller than 1.2m,” explained Studio Hinge.
      “This allows maximum natural light to permeate deep into the plan and for most adults to have an unobstructed view whilst standing, while creating sheltered semi-private nooks to sit and read in,” it added.
      “It also provides a very different perception of the library for children, from whose vantage the space between the circular bookshelves is playful, almost labyrinthine in nature.”
      A ceiling of timber planks adds interest to the multipurpose roomIn the multipurpose room, the ceiling has been finished with an undulating pattern of timber planks and the walls lined with cabinets to maximise storage.
      Forest of Knowledge was recently longlisted in the workplace interior (small) category of Dezeen Awards 2023.
      Elsewhere in Mumbai, The Act of Quad recently converted a former library into its own interior design studio, with a see-through facade of perforated, white metal sheets and Malik Architecture transformed an ice factory into an events space.
      The photography is by Suryan + Dang.
      Project credits:
      Design team: Interior Architecture – Studio Hinge, Pravir Sethi, Chintan ZalavadiyaLighting design: Studio Trace, Tripti SahniMEP: ARKK Consultants

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      Otherworlds transforms Goan villa into restaurant that “celebrates chance encounters”

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      Local design studio Otherworlds drew on the traditional Goan balcão when converting a 1980s villa in Panjim, India, into the Terttulia restaurant and bar.

      Housed in a Portuguese-style villa, Terttulia Goa is defined by a central island bar informed by the balcão – an outdoor porch with built-in seats that serves as the entrance to a typical Goan home.
      The restaurant takes its name from the Spanish word tertulia, meaning a social gathering with literary or artistic associations.
      Intimate two-seater booths flank the bar”The balcão is a crucial part of a Goan home as this is where one spends most of their time,” Otherworlds founder Arko told Dezeen.
      “At a time of rampant urbanisation, all houses tend to become very self-contained, private and detached, separated away from the city or the neighbourhood,” he continued.

      “The balcão becomes all the more important at such a time as it is built with the idea of reinforcing the kinship between the house and the neighbourhood.”
      Terttulia Goa is defined by a central bar informed by the balcãoMultidisciplinary studio Otherworlds overhauled the villa, which it describes as a “formerly enclosed shell”, by removing some of the external walls and extending the dining area into an outdoor porch.
      This area is sheltered by a large bamboo canopy with elliptical openings that diffuse the natural light, transforming the space throughout the day.
      The canopy is intended to mitigate the region’s extreme weather conditions; sheltering customers from the rain during monsoon season and providing a semi-open space with plenty of air circulation during the hot summer months.
      Low-hung lamps add a sense of “whimsy”Otherworlds designed the bar so that customers face each other, rather than facing the wall, in a bid to “encourage chance encounters”.
      “The intention was to create an immersive atmospheric experience that inspires a feeling of being in a tropical, lush outdoor space under an overgrown natural canopy,” said Arko.
      A metal and fluted glass structure hung from the building’s external walls floats above the white marble bartop and holds the arc-shaped lamps that light the intimate two-seater booths flanking the bar.
      A bamboo canopy was inserted to mitigate the region’s extreme weather conditionsAt night, the restaurant is lit by low-hung sinuous lamps informed by sweeping stems that are intended to add a sense of “whimsy” to the interior.
      Adhering to Terttulia’s signature green and white colour scheme, the studio opted for a palette of locally sourced materials, including the green-pigmented hand-cast concrete that it used to create the restaurant’s flooring.
      “The green pigmented hand-cast concrete floor, largely termed as IPS [Indian Patent stone], is found in most places in the country and is also used to finish the balcão in all Goan homes,” Arko explained.
      Terttulia Goa is housed in a revamped 1980s villaOtherworlds worked with local workshop Jyamiti & Sea to create ovoid terrazzo accents that are scattered in various places across the floor and walls.
      The studio achieved what it terms “the perfect green” using a mixture of white and grey cement and green oxide pigment.
      Otherworlds opted for a palette of locally sourced materials”The tricky bit with coloured concrete is achieving the exact shade [because] once the cement sets and is polished, the result is quite different from the initial wet mix,” said Arko.
      “The process required numerous iterations and experiments to get the right mixture of materials that would yield the correct shade.”
      The green cement is offset by dark wood derived from the matti, Goa’s state tree.
      “We imagined the restaurant to be an extension of the house and while being part of it, [we also wanted it to] feel like a part of the city.”
      Other projects that take a contemporary approach to Indian design traditions include a rammed-earth family home in Rajasthan designed by Sketch Design Studio and a Rain Studio-designed “native yet contemporary” home in Chennai.
      The photography is by Suryan and Dang. 

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      FADD Studio models Bangalore duplex apartment on caterpillar curvatures

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      Indian practice FADD Studio has fused two separate apartments inside a high-rise development in Bangalore to create a multigenerational family home.

      The neighbouring four-bedroom apartments, stacked one on top of the other in the SNN Clermont residential tower, were transformed into a six-bedroom duplex for a cosmopolitan couple, their parents and two young children.
      FADD Studio has fused two apartments in Bangalore’s SNN Clermont towerFADD Studio’s interventions were driven by the owners’ desire for something new and unique.
      “Our clients wanted this home to be contemporary and free of the fuss of their previous home, which was more old-fashioned with traditional elements from the previous generation,” the studio told Dezeen.
      “They didn’t want a run-of-the-mill place that looked like any other home with straight lines and contemporary anonymity. They wanted character and they were open to exploring the language of curves and most certainly wanted something out of the box.”

      A sweeping staircase now connects the two flatsThe practice gave careful thought to how best to open up and link the two apartments before deciding on two connection points – a staircase near the entrance on the lower level and a double-height section in the adjacent living area for visual interest and ease of communication between family members.
      Knowing the clients wanted to avoid straight lines, FADD Studio carefully considered the form of these linking elements.
      “We began our usual process of looking to nature for inspiration, from shell exoskeletons to caterpillar curvatures, from topographical maps of different landscapes to fish scales and from sand dunes to waves,” the practice said.
      A “zebra border” on the floor helps to define different zonesThis research formed the basis for the curving statement staircase that sweeps into the living area.
      “It has a sculptural feel with the addition of multiple curves, carved into each riser’s deep red marble,” the studio said.
      The narrow double-height section in the living room is framed by an arched cutout in the ceiling, enveloped in white micro-cement with a soft sheen finish.
      A small double-height space was carved out in the living roomLinking the two levels, the double-height back wall is fluted in an irregular pattern, mimicking the soft ripples and waves that can be found across the ceiling in the neighbouring entrance hall.
      “It hides all the conducting and allows a smooth transition between the different ceiling heights within the apartment,” FADD Studio said.

      The Act of Quad designs multi-generational Mumbai apartment with its own temple

      The firm’s approach to the flooring was similarly inventive. In the main living space, a “zebra border” of black-and-white stones swoops and crisscrosses in seemingly abstract patterns across the floor, helping to bring definition to the different zones.
      The spaces in between are filled by a selection of heavily-veined peach-pink marbles.
      “We created an inlay pattern much like repeating fish scales or groups of overlapping wild mushrooms but more abstract,” said FADD Studio.
      The upstairs living room is organised around a circular slab of marble flooringIn the upstairs living room, the furniture is grouped around a central circle of linear-veined marble surrounded, which is inlaid into the floor and surrounded by another black-and-white border.
      “The flooring is dramatic, something bold and thoughtful, contributing to the strong visual and spatial language of the space,” the studio said.
      “The ceilings and floor defy the mundane and give us and the apartment’s inhabitants pure joy to see the lines and curves continue infinitely.”
      A black-and-white border cuts across the floorThe peach, black and white of the floor ties into the colour scheme throughout the apartment.
      “This colour palette is unusual for an Indian home,” FADD Studio said. “These colours, along with the nature-inspired curvatures and rounded forms resulted in a minimal-futuristic vibe.”
      With so many ideas at work within the space itself, the furniture has taken on a supporting role.
      The duplex now has six bedroomsThe colour palette was chosen to tie in with the walls so that the sculptural shapes and curving forms become the focal point, while boucle and textural cotton bring interest in terms of tactility.
      Another Indian studio known for its unconventional apartment interiors is The Act of Quad, which has recently completed a home with cobalt-blue accents in Thane and a Mumbai apartment with its own temple.
      The photography is by Gokul Rao Kadam.

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