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Two flats in a Mumbai high-rise were combined to create a “minimal but playful” home for three generations, which local studio The Act of Quad has decorated with multiple spherical and rounded shapes. More
Architecture and interior design practice Studio Renesa has used green granite to evoke the feeling of alfresco dining at this restaurant, bar and cafe in Punjab, India. More
Textured surfaces and sinuous forms populate this outpost of vegan restaurant chain Sequel in Mumbai, which was designed by local architect Ashiesh Shah. More
Indian office MAIA Design Studio has designed a Pan-Asian restaurant in Bangalore, which brings local crafts together with a Tokyo-inspired palette of colours and patterns.Lucky Chan is a casual restaurant serving sushi and dim-sum, which takes over the grand floor of a two-storey house.
Lucky Chan takes over the ground floor of a two-storey house
Because it’s a residential building, the space is divided up into a series of rooms. MAIA Design Studio founder Shruti Jaipuria saw this as an opportunity to explore a variety of different concepts.
Her interior design scheme gives each room its own character, but they all share an eclectic mix of colour, pattern and material.
Mosaic tiles create stripy walls in the open-air section
Large surfaces of grey Sadharalli granite feature alongside ceramic tiles that combine candy shades of red, yellow, pink and green.
“We were inspired by the hip Harajaku style of Tokyo while developing the colour palette,” said Jaipuria, “but the material palette is more local”.
“As an office, we aspire to use local material and craft in contemporary and unexpected contexts,” she told Dezeen.
The main dining room combines granite walls with a ceiling installation
Lucky Chan can be divided up into five different zones: the main dining room, the open-air section, the passageway, the sushi bar and the private dining room.
The main dining room is perhaps the most simple of the spaces, although it features a very unique detail – hanging from the ceiling is an installation of 250 turned-wood sculptures, created in collaboration with local artisans.
These 250 turned-wood sculptures were made by local artisans
These curvaceous wooden objects celebrate the tradition of hand-lathe woodwork in the nearby township of Channapatna.
Each piece is coloured with natural lacquers, made using substances that include turmeric, walnut bark and manjista root.
A passageway section features a neon sign that reads #heretogetlucky
Mirrors lining the surrounding ceiling beams create the impression that the installation goes on forever.
“The visual effect makes the large 900-millimetre beams disappear, thus opening up the otherwise small space and making it lighter,” said Jaipuria.
The sushi bar is made from birch plywood and covered in green tiles
Wooden chairs provide seating in both this space and the adjoining open-air section. These chairs feature seats hand-woven with coir, a coconut fibre, making use of another local craft technique.
John Anthony restaurant by Linehouse is “British tea hall turned Chinese canteen”
Mosaic tiles create a pattern of stripes on the end walls. The same tiles feature in the sushi bar, where they create a grid effect. They also form a chequerboard pattern on the table in the private dining room.
“Parallel lines and cross-grids started to play an important role while we were designing the space,” said Jaipuria.
The private dining room has panelled walls and a chequerboard-patterned table
Birch plywood brings a more lightweight feel to these rooms, providing custom furniture and also panelling on the walls.
These wooden elements include a sushi bar with an integrated conveyor belt, which Jaipuria believes is the first of its kind in India.
Other details include silk lamps that were handmade in Pondicherry, an array of plants in colourful pots, and a neon sign that reads #heretogetlucky.
Norm Architects also looked to Japanese design for its Sticks n Sushi restaurant in Copenhagen, while Linehouse referenced a retro Chinese canteen for its John Anthony dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong.
Photography is by Gokul Rao Kadam.
Project credits
Design studio: MAIA Design StudioDesign team: Shruti Jaipuria, Roshni Ramnane, Rahul ChughChannapatna execution: Atul Johri, Mubarak
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Bodice founder Ruchika Sachdeva has designed the pared-back interiors of the womenswear brand’s store in New Delhi to counter the “more, new and now” culture of fast fashion.Bodice’s flagship is located in New Delhi’s affluent Vasant Kunj neighbourhood, occupying a building on the same site as the brand’s design studio.
Sachdeva took on the task of designing the interiors of the store herself, setting out to create a simple, thoughtful space that would encourage customers to “think more consciously about what they’re buying and why”.
Top image: the exterior of Bodice’s New Delhi flagship. Above: floor-to-ceiling windows flood the store with natural light
“I feel there is a need to question the way we consume clothes,” Sachdeva told Dezeen. “The fast-paced, retail-driven space like a market or a mall does the opposite by encouraging customers to buy quantity instead of quality.”
“The culture there makes it alright to buy more and dispose quickly whereas our philosophy at Bodice is a little different,” continued Sachdeva, who is a judge for Dezeen Awards 2020. “We focus on longevity and for us, the essence of the product is a lot more important than the number of collections.”
“We are not really in the favour of feeding the ‘more and new and now’ culture, so I felt that the store should reflect that.”
Bamboo blinds partially cover the windows
Fixtures and furnishings throughout the open-plan store are therefore few and far between – those that do appear have been made from naturally sourced materials.
This sustainable ethos is also applied to Bodice’s clothing, which is designed to be a more minimal, practical alternative to garments currently offered to women in India.
Pieces are fabricated from non-synthetic textiles like wool or silk and then dyed with natural pigments such as those sourced from indigo plants.
Furniture inside the store has been kept to a minimum
The blinds in the store that partially shroud the floor-to-ceiling windows are made from bamboo. The triangular-frame rails where garments are hung have been crafted from light-hued mango wood.
Sachdeva also designed some of the tables and chairs that have been scattered throughout the space, borrowing samples from the adjacent studio.
Bodice clothes are for the women “challenging conventions” in Indian society
“Since this was the first space I have designed, I organically had a very clear idea of what I wanted,” she explained.
“I knew I wanted it to be surrounded by trees and nature, [the store] has a lot of clear glass so I wanted it to be filled with sunlight and since we are in India, we have plenty of it,” Sachdeva added.
“I feel that the store was a culmination of years of visual information that I have been processing.”
Clothes rails are crafted from mango wood
A growing number of designers and brands are attempting to slow the pace of the fashion industry and make consumers more considerate of what they purchase.
Earlier this year, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele announced that the high-end label will now be holding just two fashion shows per year instead of the traditional five in a bid to reduce waste that accumulates from producing each collection and the subsequent harm to the environment.
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Architecture practice Studio VDGA has renovated an office in Pune, India, with partition walls made from cardboard and MDF.Located in the Pimpri Chinchwad district, the four-storey office for 100 people has been given a recyclable fit-out.
Partition walls are made from cardboard and medium-density fibreboard (MDF)
Called Office in Cardboard, the project has been shortlisted for Dezeen Awards 2020 in the large workspace interior category.
“We devised an innovative concept to replace the solid partition walls with more functional and textured material,” said Studio VDGA.
“It also serves as a low-cost material since it does not require polishing or painting as it is kept raw.”
Honeycomb cardboard is light, strong and low cost
Studio VDGA’s paper-based design was made for an electric-components manufacturing company that is in the process of moving away from its previous work of making petrol and diesel vehicle components.
The cardboard’s recyclable properties are intended to symbolise this shift towards a more environmentally-friendly industry.
Cuts in the cardboard create patterns of shadow
Sheets of honeycomb cardboard – a kind of paper packaging with an internal hexagon structure for strength – form divider walls, doors and a backdrop for the reception area.
“Honeycomb board was first introduced in the aeronautical industry in the form of aluminium honeycomb boards,” said Studio VDGA.
“In paper form, it is used extensively in Japan since being a lightweight material, it does not cause harm to life in the case of earthquakes,” added the studio. “IKEA is using it in abundance to create light modular furniture.”
The cardboard has been left raw rather than painted
In some areas, the cardboard elements wrap around the external walls and connect to form dividers between different zones of the office floors.
Curving elements formed from the cardboard make sections of wall that billow into the room or wrap around supporting columns.
Curving cardboard elements wrap around columns
Sections of the sheets’ exterior have been cut away to reveal the internal honeycomb in order to create an interesting texture.
Nudes creates cafe in Mumbai entirely from cardboard
“What interested us was the cross-section through the board rather than the material itself,” said the studio.
“Transverse cuts through the nodes of the hexagon reveals sharper fins, whereas longitudinal cuts through the board reveals uneven wider bands. This combination of sharper fins and wider bands, used in combination with bands of MDF, creates interesting patterns and shadows.”
Paint tins have been turned into a plant display
Cardboard absorbs sound, so the portion walls double as baffles to keep the background noise of the office low and grant employees more privacy.
Slim horizontal slots form windows to allow light through in some areas. An installation of plants and electrical components displayed in white paint tins left over from the refurbishment hangs from the ceiling.
Tins filled with plants and electronic components hang from the ceiling
Ceilings have been left open, with the air ducts visible, so as to create as much height as possible.
The reception area’s floor is tiled with different kinds of dark stone, and black metal railings bracket the stairs, with brass rings designed to look like an abacus.
Railings on the stairs are designed to look like an abacus
Based in Pune, Studio VDGA was founded by husband and wife team Deepak and Varsha Guggar in 2004.
Cardboard was also the material of choice for this school office in Melbourne, a collection of colourful and corrugated furniture, and the entirety of this cafe in Mumbai.
Photography is by Hemant Patil.
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Iram Sultan studio took visual cues from common medicinal products when designing the office interiors for Indian pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila, which feature curved archways and vaulted ceilings.Iram Sultan was tasked with designing the 20,000-square-foot office floor belonging to the chairman, managing director and director of leading pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila, which is located in Gujarat on the western coast of India.
The studio wanted the interior spaces to reflect the work that the firm does. Each room’s structure has therefore been based on the shape of tablets and pills, symbolising pharmaceuticals.
All corners of the interior structure have been rounded, accompanied by receding arches and curved, vaulted ceilings. This is particularly apparent in the main corridor that leads to both wings of the office floor.
The image of pills has also been extended to details like the wall panels and door mouldings, which feature the shape of two halves of a broken-apart pill.
On either side of each door at skirting level are small inlaid pieces of bronze carved in the shape of a circle and a cylinder, to represent a tablet and a pill.
The chairman, managing director and director all have their own office on the floor, each with its own washroom and dresser as well as adjoining meeting rooms.
A pill-shaped, lacquered table inlaid with dried flowers acts as the centrepiece in one of the meeting rooms, while another meeting room is punctuated with a large, dark table whose base mimics the shape of a rock.
In this same space, the curved corners of the walls are dotted with small, handmade porcelain art pieces that are designed to be an abstract representation of the plant-based ingredients that go into Zydus Cadila’s products.
Other elements of the interior spaces were informed by the company’s logo, which comprises its name, Zydus, in blue with the letter d in red, and the shape of a cross replacing its centre.
This includes the marble flooring along the corridors, which features strips of white framed with black outlines with an inlay pattern of black crosses.
Iram Sultan extended this medical cross symbol across the whole office floor, incorporating it into various tables, which feature a black cross at their centre or sculpted, three-dimensional forms of the shape across their surface.
The logo’s colours also informed the custom carpet in the board room, which is covered in algebraic markings in black, red and blue.
This was one of the most fun elements to create, according to the studio, who chose the scientific equations as “a gentle nod to the bedrock of research that the company is built on.”
To warm up the interiors, the studio chose to clad the walls in dyed oak veneer. Thin sheets of bronze wrap around each archway lining the corridors, which also work to accentuate the spaces as they reflect the light.
Wooden floors of a slightly darker tone feature in individual offices in contrast to the surrounding hallways.
Each individual office was tailored according to the user’s personality and their working requirements. One office features soft grey lower-wall panels made from stone, while another has walls completely clad in light veneer and a large, oblong desk.
“The project is beautiful for us because it reflects the client brief perfectly,” said the studio. “While fulfilling all the requirements of an office space, the space is not a typical cookie-cutter design, but a bespoke creation made specifically for the people who use it.”
“The design is also beautiful because of the balance we managed to achieve in both the material palette and the space volumes,” it continued. “It is a serene space with quiet drama that we created using bespoke elements, clever details and unexpected materials.”
The Zydus Cadila chairman’s office floor was Iram Sultan’s second project for the client, having previously designed the interiors for their home.
“A project very close to our heart,” said the studio. “When we started work on this space, we had established a relationship of trust and understood the client well.”
“The project has been designed in the spirit of collaboration, beginning with the clients and adding other collaborators like product designers, manufacturers, contractors and consultants,” it added.
Dezeen Awards 2020 interiors longlist announced
Iram Sultan’s Zydus Cadila office has been longlisted in the large workspace interior category of Dezeen Awards 2020.
Other longlisted interiors projects include an office in Japan by Shuhei Goto Architects, in the small workspace interior category, which features large, stepped boxes that introduce different levels to the space.
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Architecture studio Sārānsh used a range of materials to create a rich sense of tactility inside this family home in Ahmedabad, western India. VS House is situated on the fringes of the city of Ahmedabad. It was built seven years ago as a four-bed home but has been reconfigured by Sārānsh. Now it hosts three […] More
