ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
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` 200 JULY-AUGUST 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
still, life
INDIA
NTEN ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
` 200 JULY AUGUST 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
INDIA
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14 E DI TO R’ S LE T TE R 16 C O NTRI B UTO RS
A still-life series that reflects
JU LY- AU GU ST
the upside-down, topsy-turvy
21 Z EITGE I ST
atmosphere of life right now.
down
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A razor sharp edit of design, craft,
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
` 200 JULY AUGUST 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
76 N ATURE MO RTE
8 8 ZA RIN A
fashion and textiles, the coolest
Earlier this year, artist Zarina
off-site exhibits and creative
Hashmi passed away at 82. AD pays
collaborations, plus design news
homage to the late printmaker
relevant to the current moment.
with a collection of her floor plan
INDIA
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CO VER
60 T R EN DS
artworks that expound what home
T H E MO N S OO N IS SU E
meant to the artist.
66 H OT D E SKI N G
Stylist Priyanka Shah creates a
Featuring Zaha Hadid, Frank Lloyd
series of still lifes with a selection
Wright, Charlotte Perriand and
of furniture, accessories and natural
more—AD’s picks of the most iconic
objects. ‘Nature Morte’ (pg 76).
desks, from the classic to the
Photographer: Sahil Behal.
avant-garde.
PHOTO: JEAN-FRANCOIS JAUSSAUD/LUXPRODUCTIONS.
still, life
2 6
1 0 2
1 22 B L AN C SL AT E Joseph Dirand’s new apartment
Our selection of the best design
on the Right Bank of the Seine is
products to own this season.
a chic space accoutred in stone,
PHOTO: SUNHIL SIPPY.
150 STYLE NOTES
156 STOCKISTS An A-to-Z listing of stores.
marble and other natural materials.
1 34 TAN G E RI N E DR E AM
10 2 RE AR WI ND OW
158 TH E M OOD:
From Manhattan to Morocco—
M ANS I POD DAR
Photographer Sunhil Sippy shoots
designers Frank de Biasi and Gene
BrownPaperBag founder and
life in lockdown from his
Meyer’s move to Tangier was four
tastemaker Mansi Poddar creates
apartment at The Imperial in
years in the making.
a mood board using some of her
offers a cinematic perspective.
114 C H RISTI AN LIAIGRE
1 46 SATU RD AY N I GH T
favourite design objects.
Earlier this year, Greenlam and
1 1 4
AD took the party to Bengaluru—
The French designer's first
in celebration of the brand’s new
project in India, a well-kept
collection, interior trends and
secret in Lutyens’ Delhi, is a
a special installation made by
modernist mahal.
architect Saurabh Dakshini.
PHOTO: AMBROISE TEZENAS.
Mumbai, while writer Raja Sen
EDITOR GREG FOSTER MANAGING EDITOR Komal Sharma ART DIRECTOR Chandni Mehta DESIGNER Akshita Shrivastava COPY DIRECTOR Tyrel Rodricks JUNIOR STYLIST Mitalee Mehta FEATURES WRITER Ritupriya Basu JUNIOR FEATURES WRITER Shristi Singh PHOTO ASSISTANT Sarang Gupta EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Shalini Kanojia WATCH EDITOR Rishna Shah MANAGER SYNDICATION Michelle Pereira SYNDICATION COORDINATORS Giselle D’Mello DIGITAL EDITOR Aditi Sharma Maheshwari ASSISTANT DIGITAL EDITOR Kriti Saraswat-Satpathy DIGITAL WRITER Avni Raut PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Sunil Nayak SENIOR MANAGER - COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION Sudeep Pawar PRODUCTION MANAGER Mangesh Pawar SENIOR PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Abhishek Mithbaokar PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Geetesh Patil
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You can’t imagine the bandwidth of Zoom calls that went into deciding what we should do for the cover of this issue. After all, we were debating a singular image that needed to reflect the uncertain, upside-down times we now live in. Or, even more difficult, a picture that would be emblematic of the new importance our homes have as our entire universe. Reacting to the pressure, my first thought was of Rahul Khanna. To be shot by his laptop in his apartment, apparently conducting a video call, fully clothed on top but wearing the same pink swimming trunks that he wore on the cover of our March 2019 issue. Work-from-home with a little humour and nudity was, I thought, the answer, in those naive first days of lockdown. A few highlights of the other ideas that nearly made it to page one: Chandni, our art director, lobbied for the now oh-so-familiar Zoom call grid, offering a voyeuristic glimpse into our colleagues’ interiors. For a moment, I was convinced that this offered a brilliant snapshot of how we live now. But it’s not like me not to change my mind. Next, AD’s managing editor, Komal, made a compelling case for an artwork by the late, great Zarina Hashmi—a perfectly appropriate drawing titled Distance that you can see on page 89. At some point, I had my heart set on Ratan Tata’s study, thinking, “What could say ‘stay at home’ more than a picture of India’s ultimate boardroom tycoon working from his home?” One sarcastic so-and-so even suggested a concept cover that you could innovatively use as a face mask. But finally, my right-hand man Tyrel argued the case for an image that we had already shot, that we could send to the printer this instant. In the end, the copy director always wins. I had always wanted to do a still-life cover. After all, there is a grand tradition of the genre at Condé Nast, which championed Irving Penn’s natures mortes on early Vogue covers. And we did try it once, though it remains the only shoot I have killed since I became editor of this magazine, the images being deleted from the server, if not memory. My fingers had been burnt and I have since shied away from this difficult mode of photography that can either look amateurish, tryhard or archive-worthy spectacular. You see, still lifes are easy to get very, very wrong. One insensitively placed pomegranate and the mood changes entirely. Be careful! But then I invited the brilliant stylist Priyanka Shah to come to my office to discuss how to bring some of her magic to AD. She had styled two shoots for us previously: first, the infamous flop that was canned, but also a witty assemblage of antiques that I liked so much that one of them hangs in my living room. There’s more to Priyanka’s work than just incredibly clever compositions of furniture. For her third shoot for AD, each portrait is replicated with vegetables. Yes, I did write that. It looks incredible—way better than it sounds. A brilliant reference to the history of art and the start of a new tradition for AD India, I hope. To say we overthought things is a major understatement. But this, dear reader, is the most carefully considered cover ever. The one we all had a say in. Filled with nods to the archives, to the canon of photography and to our own pretentiousness. Oh, who am I kidding! The reality was that lockdown rules meant we weren’t allowed to shoot anything new and had to make do with something we had shot just before lockdown. But doesn’t this feel right? Totally representative of how life has been turned upside down and the quiet pause of our social lives. And there’s the moral of the story. The what-I-learnt-during-lockdown lesson. Be still, my friend. Don’t overthink. Because, sometimes, you already have exactly what you’re looking for.
GREG FOSTER
ILLUSTRATION: SHWETA MALHOTRA
ST
Skorpio Keramik table Wanda chairs Apollo lamps
cattelanitalia.com Hyderabad - VENTURA INTERIORS PVT LTD, #B26, Road no.92, Jubilee Hills, Near Starbucks, Film nagar, Hyderabad, Telangana - 500033 - T. +91 40 42212368, e-mail: info@venturainteriors.com B a n g a l o r e - V E N T U R A I N T E R I O R S P V T LT D , P r e s t i g e N e b u l a I I , 1 4 4 , I n f a n t r y R o a d , B a n g a l o r e , K a r n a t a k a 5 6 0 0 0 1 - T. + 9 1 8 0 4 0 9 6 6 2 0 0 , e - m a i l : i n f o @ v e n t u r a i n t e r i o r s . c o m Mumba - AND MORE STORIES 27, Raghuvanshi Mills Compound, Behind Elegant Marbes Senapati Bapat Marg, Mumbai Marg Lower Parel Pare Mumbai 400013 - T. +91 22 24931016 /+91 98 21044114, e-mail: info@andmorestories.com
MANSI SONI
PRIYANKA SHAH
SAHIL BEHAL
STYLIST
PHOTOGRAPHER
A fashion and lifestyle photographer, Behal is currently interested in the balance between minimal and maximal. In this issue, he shoots AD’s still-life cover (pg 76).
ARTHUR ELGORT
A Mumbai-based multidisciplinary designer, Shah possesses an uncanny ability to transform objects into conceptual sculptures. In this issue, she composed AD’s still-life cover story (pg 76). “I wanted to move away from functional furniture settings and explore compositions that would celebrate the form of pieces.”
HAMISH BOWLES WRITER
The international editor-atlarge for ‘Vogue’ US, Bowles is a leading authority on fashion and interior design the world over. In this issue, he visits the designers Frank de Biasi and Gene Meyer at their enchanting home in Tangier (pg 134).
ROOBINA KARODE CURATOR
The director of KNMA, New Delhi, Karode writes about the late artist Zarina Hashmi. “AD’s Portfolio section offers an alternate space of engagement with Zarina’s visual vocabulary that was interestingly inspired by architecture.” (pg 88)
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ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST | JULY-AUGUST 2020
ADRIEN DIRAND PHOTOGRAPHER
In this issue, the Frenchman shoots the home of his architect brother Joseph Dirand (pg 122). “I capture the harmony between his architectural intentions and the objects that compose the space and articulate the syntax of his personal story.”
MATTHIEU SALVAING
RAJA SEN
PHOTOGRAPHER
WRITER
In this issue, the French photographer—well known for his collaborative published works with Oscar Niemeyer—travels to Tangier to photograph designers Frank de Biasi and Gene Meyer’s home (pg 134). “To plunge into the universe of Frank de Biasi is to put into images his sense of colour, his taste for works of art that have a history, and his art of living.”
A film critic, columnist and screenwriter, Sen is the author of ‘The Best Baker In The World’, an all-ages adaptation of The Godfather. “For this issue, AD gave me a delicious brief. At a time when we aren’t making (or going to the) movies, we may as well imagine them taking place next door.” (pg 102)
MANSI PODDAR ENTREPRENEUR
COLSTON JULIAN
The co-founder of BrownPaperBag climbed up her stepladder (twice!) for this issue of AD. Working within the restrictions of the lockdown, Poddar styled and shot ‘The Mood’ (pg 158) all by herself. “This mood board is a reflection of the things I’m currently surrounded by, objects that bring me comfort, from the outlandish to the mundane.”
SUNHIL SIPPY PHOTOGRAPHER
For this film-maker and photographer, the lockdown inspired this series (pg 102) for AD, made from his Mumbai home—as well as an entirely new mood to his observational photographic approach.
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ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST | JULY-AUGUST 2020
SUNIL SETHI WRITER
The veteran New Delhi-based writer met with Tarun Tahiliani to talk about his label’s 25th anniversary (pg 56). “Even though the grand celebrations were halted midway, his enthusiasm for the future of fashion remains undimmed.”
J AU US ZEITGEIST The world has changed since our last issue. The hand sanitizer emerges as an emblem of the times and designers respond to the current medical challenge with laser-cut rapid deployment beds for hospitals. In addition, AD brings you a selection of love-inspired armchairs, historic coffee-table books and kolam-patterned rugs to spark some revenge spending.
REINVENTION
TEXT: SHRISTI SINGH. PHOTO: CHANDNI MEHTA.
ASIAN PAINTS ADDS TO ITS COVID-19 EFFORTS WITH ‘VIROPROTEK 200’, A HAND AND SURFACE SANITIZER
A
mongst the many health and personal care items charting a growing demand this year, sanitizers have emerged as significant soldiers against an all-consuming pandemic. And they’ve caught the attention of India’s leading paint company. Earlier this May, Asian Paints began distribution for its first-ever range of hand and surface sanitizers in an attempt to support the government’s combative measures against Covid-19 and the public’s call for increased cleanliness in its wake. The alcohol-based, clove-scented ‘Viroprotek 200’ hand sanitizer and disinfectant follows in the footsteps of its creator’s other offerings in the health and safety segment (Royale Health Shield, for instance, which is a paint that assists in bacterial protection for homes). “We felt it apt to consolidate our portfolio in the hygiene space and address the growing requirement of hand and surface sanitizers for increased protection,” says Amit Syngle, CEO and Managing Director of Asian Paints. Currently concocted in the company’s Ankleshwar plant in Gujarat, the primary ingredients for the sanitizer are isopropyl alcohol and clove oil and leaves. Needless to say, the final product meets high standards of quality and safety and is devised keeping all necessary statutory requirements in mind. “Asian Paints has always been known as a ‘responsible and caring brand’. We’re supporting various government initiatives and helping communities around us,” adds Syngle. ‘Viroprotek 200’ thus becomes a small but reassuring drop in the company’s ocean of relief efforts that include NGO contributions, financial aid, and state pledges.
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TEXT: SEAN RAI-ROCHE. PHOTO: DARIUSZ JASAK, ©MALAPARTE.
SALONE DEL CAPRI PIECES FROM THE ICONIC CASA MALAPARTE IN ITALY FIND A NEW LEASE OF LIFE IN A SHOW AT THE GAGOSIAN GALLERY IN LONDON
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he feel and features of a historic house in Italy have been transported to central London. Casa Malaparte—the brainchild of famed 20thcentury Italian artist, author, film-maker, Original walnut and pine table architect and renegade conceived by Curzio Malaparte in situ at Casa Malaparte, Capri. Curzio Malaparte—is an architectural gem. Located in Capri with gorgeous vistas of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the house stands as a homage to its late master who designed it, and the contents within, in 1937. “He was a genius of his time,” says Serena Cattaneo Adorno, the director of the Gagosian gallery in Paris, “an ambiguous and mysterious character”. On a cliff edge resting 32 metres above the sea, he spent years perfecting his creation, shaping its proportions and curating it with the most splendid furniture. That furniture is now on display in Mayfair thanks to efforts by his youngest descendant, Tommaso Rositani Suckert, who has produced several faithful reproductions. Created by artisans in northern Italy, the works include a console designed in 1941 by Malaparte. A thick slab of walnut sits atop two capitals made from tuff stone: the vertical volcanic rock rises upwards before being smoothed along a polished horizontal plane. Also present is a captivating table design that twists upwards from trunk-like legs of solid pine, before spreading out as a tabletop canopy of dark walnut. Setting the scene, taking viewers directly into the main room of Casa Malaparte, is a 1:1 replica of the view from one of its iconic windows. “The idea was to take the viewer into the living room of the house,” says Adorno. The main room’s proportions reflect the deep complexity and creativity of the Italian avant-garde period in which it was designed. Functioning as a house, film set and gallery at various points in time, Casa Malaparte has been a source of inspiration for architects and artists alike, with Adorno comparing it to an “artistic and architectural mecca”—a glimpse of which can now be caught in Mayfair, London. Casa Malaparte runs from 15 June to 19 September 2020 in the Gagosian gallery on 17-19 Davies Street, London.
BEAR HUG
TEXT: RITUPRIYA BASU. PHOTO: JEAN-FRANÇOIS JAUSSAUD/LUXPRODUCTIONS.
PIERRE YOVANOVITCH REVEALS HIS INNER ROMANTIC WITH A WITTY, SENSUOUS COLLECTION OF FURNITURE CALLED LOVE
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pair of embroidered hands wraps around a curvaceous armchair, as if frozen in an embrace. Topped with two ear-like knobs, Pierre Yovanovitch’s ‘Daydream Mama Bear’ armchair (pictured) gets an update in LOVE, his latest collection of furniture, launched recently in an exhibition at New York’s R & Company, with scenography by Yovanovitch himself. The range of lamps, cushions, coffee tables and chairs is reminiscent of the French interior designer’s penchant for curvilinear forms and his recurring motifs of luscious lips and urgent, reaching hands. Embroidered by Lesage Intérieurs, the details underscore the inspiration: that strange, undefinable feeling called love. But not all is as expected. Vibrant hues that are often associated with the idea of love are replaced by a milder, softer palette. “I wanted to bring light to the full spectrum, whether that be the love we have for our family members, the passion of a new romance, or the heartbreak associated with love lost,” says Yovanovitch. He softens corners and wraps the Jean Arp-esque rounded, gliding contours of the pieces in woolly fabric, evoking the familiar warmth of love. He also reminds us that this labour of love hasn’t been a solitary feat. “Some materials we chose, such as ceramics and glass, were not the easiest mediums to work with; joining forces with some of the best artisans in the world resulted in an incredibly collaborative design process,” he adds. Nights spent in the anticipation of a new romance, or in lamenting a lost love, need special places to settle into. Luckily, there’s a collection of furniture that feels a lot like love.
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All figures mentioned above are as of July 2020
PRIYA ASWANI AND HASEENA JETHMALANI’S DESIGN COLLABORATION HAS ITS ROOTS IN A CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP, A COMMON APPROACH AND DISTINCT DESIGN SENSIBILITIES
‘Positano’ salad bowls.
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TEXT: GAURI KELKAR. PHOTO: SUNHIL SIPPY.
PEAS IN A POD
air an interior designer with refined taste and a textile designer with an elegant aesthetic, add craftsmen of meticulous skill and you’ll likely end up with a fine-looking piece of artistry. Priya Aswani and Haseena Jethmalani began their product design collaboration, titled PH, in mid-2014, as the former says, “over a few memorable evenings and some great wine”. If the most recent repertoire of pieces is anything to go by, it continues to get stronger; not surprising, given that it was forged in friendship and similar tastes. “We seem to tap into the most creative potential in each other. I am a trained interior designer and Haseena a textile designer. I believe that this combination has fortified our teamwork.” The pieces, as a result, are a hybrid of two distinct sensibilities that complement each other. This latest series of products is made largely using teak and brass, much like their previous collections, and includes “handcrafted, handsome teak wood and brass trays, divan tables, whimsical tissue boxes—pieces that are always useful in a home, are smart and yet not too precious,” explains Aswani. Added to that is a collection of antique and new lamps, “some designed and others collected over time”. Then there is the traditional wicker work with a West African influence and lamps and lampshades that were made from restored Japanese Satsuma pieces. The collaboration is as much about the comfort of a shared aesthetic as it is about an approach that converges even as it contrasts. “Haseena’s forte is bringing life and joy to the pieces, while my approach is perhaps more measured, more conservative. I believe it is what gives us balance.” And designs by PH certainly achieve that desired balance—between aesthetic and function, and rich craft and understated appeal.
NOW IN BENGALURU
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WILD THINGS
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TO HO P . SU BA
: RITUPRIYA XT E T
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redictability is not what one expects of Scarlet Splendour— the Kolkata-based, avant-garde furniture maker—but their newest pieces might just be their most experimental designs yet. An inherent sense of playfulness runs through each of the seven collections unveiled earlier this year—whether it be Animagic by Matteo Cibic, which turns an elephant into a cabinet in ‘Elie’; or Elena Salmistraro’s I Danzatori, which draws inspiration from Indian Chhau dancers to create the ‘Chhau Donna’, a whimsical, left-of-centre cupboard. In their latest, the Forest collection by Italian designer Marcantonio Raimondi Malerba, the ‘Forest’ chair (pictured)—which was the starting point of the collection—might look like a part of a tree, but it also brings to mind a resting octopus, its tentacles topped with magical, mushroom-like caps. Covered in brass “fur” and “wood grains”, it hints at Marcantonio’s concept of a “vegetal animal”, which sits at the intersection between flora and fauna. What began with just a chair turned into a line of furniture ranging from a three-seater sofa, with cushions that resemble moss-covered logs and pebbles, to a cabinet that hides its shelves inside the trunk of a tree. The most outlandish of them all seems to be the ‘Gorilla’ chair, covered in slivers of rich black leather. Each piece across Scarlet Splendour’s latest collections pushes the boundaries of shape and form to turn into sculptural objects that are at once unconventional, unique and utilitarian. This is not furniture that quietly fits into a space. This is furniture that swiftly dials up the drama—and we love it.
:K UN AL KA MPA NI.
IS IT A TREE? OR AN OCTOPUS? ITALIAN DESIGNER MARCANTONIO’S WHIMSICAL LINE OF FURNITURE FOR SCARLET SPLENDOUR IS GOING TO KEEP YOU GUESSING
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MODERN RITUAL DESIGNERS SANDEEP AND TANIA KHOSLA COLLABORATE WITH JAIPUR RUGS ON A COLLECTION OF CARPETS INSPIRED BY THE RITUALISTIC FOLK ART OF KOLAM TEXT: DIVYA MISHRA. PHOTO COURTESY OF JAIPUR RUGS.
very morning, at the entrances of many homes in large parts of south India, kolams are drawn on the damp earth—intricate line drawings that curve, loop and double back around motifs of dots, leaves and flowers. Typically made with rice flour, kolams are meant to welcome people into the home, to be auspicious and symbolize harmony with other living beings. “We have lived in Bengaluru for 25 years and have experienced the joy of having a kolam created on our threshold every day,” says graphic designer Tania Singh Khosla. “We were intrigued by the brilliant versatility of this ancient folk-art form.” This fascination led Tania and her architect husband Sandeep Khosla to bring the essence of this art form into carpets—a clever connection to the style’s original canvas, the earth. The duo had been toying with the idea of a carpet collection for about three years when they decided to collaborate with Jaipur Rugs. “We approached Jaipur Rugs as their philosophy of supporting artisans across the country deeply resonated with us,” says Sandeep. The couple had previously worked together on a number of design projects—furniture, tiles and interiors—where they found that instead of limiting themselves to their professional roles as architect and graphic designer, the collaborations allowed them a fluidity that helped them work more intuitively, while playing to their individual strengths. For this collection too, Tania focused on the interaction of colours, and Sandeep, on the play of scale and orientation. The result is a collection of seven carpets in wool and bamboo silk that use traditional methods of handknotting to create an utterly modern rendition of an ancient folk art.
S E P T E M B E R
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DESIGN’S RESPONSE TO A PANDEMIC MUST BE QUICK, EFFICIENT, AND AGILE—AS SEEN IN HONEST STRUCTURES’ EMERGENCY HOSPITAL BED
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ince we last wrote about the young, but zealous Honest Structures in September 2019, architect Hemmant Jha has been busy, and even more so lately. Over the past few months, in a quick-footed response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Goa-based champion of modular furniture has translated Honest Structures’ design thumbprint into a single product: a simple, yet responsive rapid-deployment bed, that assembles with equal ease in a hospital hallway or in the middle of a field. Made of five parts—which can be put together in less than two minutes with no tools, bolts or screws—the considered design of the bed, at first, might seem sparse, but that’s exactly what marks its ingenuity. The idea for the bed crystallized during the very first week of the nation-wide lockdown in March, when Jha and team met with the director and dean of the Goa Medical College (GMC) to
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TEXT: RITUPRIYA BASU. PHOTOS AND RENDERING COURTESY OF HONEST STRUCTURES.
MAKING THE BED
discuss their design response to the growing crisis. The speed and intensity of the contagion foreshadowed a possibly crippling healthcare system, a threat that called for immediate inventive solutions. “When we met the team at GMC, we brainstormed multiple scenarios of our response to the crisis, one of which pointed us to the need for rapid deployment beds,” says Jha. While the blueprint of the bed borrows its sharpness and agility from Honest Structures’ overarching design language, it is also robust and inexpensive. Easy functionality was a prerequisite; after all, the beds might have to be assembled by volunteers in the middle of a field, or in tough, stressful conditions. “We knew that we were not making a traditional hospital bed. What we needed was a quick-response, highly functional, multi-use product that could be [deployed] effectively and efficiently, could be sanitized easily, and be used under various conditions and decidedly non-hospital situations,” says Jha. Jha’s belief in the singularity of material for easy recycling reflects in every facet of the design: of the five modular parts that make up the bed, the two sets of legs are laser-cut, high-strength steel—“a single, inexpensive material with minimal processing, designed to last forever”. The bed top and two beams it rests upon are cut out from a single sheet of marine plywood, or other easy-to-work robust sheet materials, like compact laminates. These materials can be procured anywhere, and the parts can be made locally using a hand saw and table saw, with a total of just seven cuts. The production is also streamlined to just two processes: the steel is laser-cut, and then the components are shaped using a CNC folding machine. The bigger picture, too, isn’t lost on them. “We certainly didn’t want a solution for the Covid-19 crisis to later contribute to another crisis of waste through temporary-use, disposable products. Post the crisis, the beds themselves could be re-used in schools and hostels, local clinics, in shelters for children and women, and for disaster relief. There are so many people who have nowhere to sleep, and nothing to sleep on; there’s certainly no lack of opportunity for reuse,” says Jha. Currently, the design is being evaluated, for the beds to then be sent to facilities that have been repurposed to boost patient capacity. This timely, responsive design reminds us that Honest Structures is no one-hit wonder; in fact, it cements the studio’s space in the vanguard of nimble-minded designers who step up to a challenge when the chips are down. View the project at honeststructures.com/ucm.
Above: A sketch of Honest Structures’ rapid deployment bed by designer and founder Hemmant Jha. Left: A render that outlines the five parts that form the rapid deployment bed. Facing page: Kopal Kulkarni, head of product design at Honest Structures, with Jha at their Goa factory.
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UNDER THE AUSPICES OF ROLEX, ARCHITECT DAVID ADJAYE MENTORS NIGERIEN ARCHITECT MARIAM KAMARA TO PLAN A CULTURAL COMPLEX IN NIGER
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olex chose him and he chose her. Two years ago, British-Ghanaian David Adjaye, one of the world’s most sought-after architects, with studios in London, New York and Accra, participated in Rolex’s Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Started in 2002, this biennial initiative has paired established professionals from different disciplines (film, dance, music or architecture) with their younger counterparts for a year-long mentorship. David Chipperfield, Peter Zumthor and Kazuyo Sejima are just some who have preceded Adjaye in this mentoring role. Adjaye explains his choice of protégée: “Africa was the last continent to be industrialized, and in recent years it has been experiencing a big building boom. That is why I wanted to work with a young local talent, and I found Mariam Kamara, who was very committed to her country, Niger. Selfishly, I was interested in seeing the land through her eyes and urged her to have a more public
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TEXT: ITZIAR NARRO. PHOTOS: ROLEX/THOMAS CHÉNÉ/MARIAM KAMARA.
TIME TO BUILD
role through this cultural complex in Niamey, the capital.” Along with Kamara, Adjaye visited 400- and 500-year-old cities that were almost intact, something that’s practically nonexistent in the rest of the continent. “Niger is at the intersection of East and West and was part of the Salt Route. Homes here have elements from the desert architecture, with materials like sand or soil, but with shapes from Islamic culture too. There are real treasures that have survived through the centuries,” Kamara explains. And through the past, as Adjaye has done with many of his works (the most renowned being the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC), they looked at the future. “The project is a declaration of intent of how important it is to know [one’s past] in order to go forward,” says Kamara, adding, “I add it is dangerous to think modernity only belongs to the West. Progress does not have a single aesthetic and, as Africans, we should find our own voice because ours is a history without interruption.” With these premises, she has conceived a semi-open space, built using materials from the area, where women will be free to go for a walk just like men (of significance in a Muslim country), which blends in with the city and has been approved by the people thanks to different workshops that were conducted with the community to seek suggestions and inputs. If it eventually becomes a reality, the building will be an outdoor library, an art gallery and a meeting point at the same time. “In Niger, you find many of the problems of today’s architecture, such as sustainability, overpopulation or climate change, but aggrandized by desertification. And that connects me to Adjaye, who always creates based on the context,” Kamara concludes. As does Adjaye: “This is a crucial moment for our profession. It is time to rethink things and be radical, not in the shapes but in the way of doing. We have to ask ourselves, not only about aesthetics, but about what each building means and its purpose.” Rolex.org
Above and top: A sketch and scaled models of the cultural complex planned by Mariam Kamara in Niamey, Niger’s capital. Facing Page: David Adjaye and his protégée Kamara in Dandaji, Niger in the market designed by her and built in 2018.
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AS PART OF ITS ‘EQUILIBRE D’HERMÈS’ COLLECTION, HERMÈS COLLABORATES WITH JASPER MORRISON TO CREATE THREE PIECES INSPIRED BY THE DESIGNER’S 1997 ‘LA TOURETTE’ CHAIR
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TEXT: DIVYA MISHRA. PHOTOS: MAXIME VERRET/HERMÈS.
CHAIR PERSON
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ounded by Thierry Hermès in 1837 as a saddlery workshop, the French luxury maison’s relationship with leather and fine craftsmanship has stood multiple tests of time, changing fashions and ever-expanding product lines. Its newest collaboration for its home collection is a salute to both its steadfast devotion to material and workmanship, as well as its approach to modern design. “Since our arrival at Hermès, we had wanted to work with Jasper [Morrison],” say Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry, deputy artistic directors at the luxury maison since 2014. “What we liked about him was his modesty, his relationship to materials, and his designs based on use,” says the duo, adding, “These are also concerns central to Hermès.” Perelman and Fabry initially asked Morrison to create a chair that would have the “qualities” of his ‘La Tourette’ design. Morrison countered this with the suggestion that they instead take that same design and rework it. This in itself was no small challenge, given that the original chair was inspired by the brutalist lines of the Convent of La Tourette (designed by none other than Le Corbusier), and was tailored to suit the contemplative existence of the Dominican monks who practised there. “This was the most thrilling part of the exercise for us—to envision a piece of furniture and the modifications to be made to it, on the basis of a single criterion: a change of user,” say Perelman and Fabry. One of the biggest challenges for Morrison was to reinvent this simple design into an ultra-luxurious three-piece suite comprising a chair, an armchair and a table. “It might seem counter-intuitive, but designing a table is much more difficult than designing a chair. The top has to be a flat sheet and the legs, which are mostly hidden, have to be interesting, while not presenting an obstacle to those seated,” he notes. The chair also had to be ergonomically modified to suit its new users’ needs. “It’s interesting that ergonomics are such a moving target,” Morrison says, adding, “In the 1960s and 70s, it was thought that the seat should be overly angled to force the sitter into a correct sitting position. Today, we know that a less angled seat is better for the back.” Almost two years since they embarked on the project, the English designer’s modest 1997 model has seen a reinvention that takes the spirit of the original ‘La Tourette’ chair and channels it into a suite whose graceful lines make its solid-oak framework look almost fluid. The deceptively simple-looking table has a bevelled top that rests on slender, slanted legs; the chair backs are gently curved now, and made out of single pieces of wood; and the seats with apertures are designed to perfectly fit a saddle-stitched leather pad. Across all three pieces in the new collection are softer angles, gently rounded edges, stronger joints and touches of luxuriously soft Hermès leather. They are now objects that find a perfect balance between form and function, materials and method, and experience and environment. The ‘Équilibre d’Hermès collection by Hermès, designed by Jasper Morrison’ smoothly blends the English designer’s exactness with the French maison’s brand of quiet, understated luxury. “Designed for comfort and simplicity, they have all become Hermès objects,” say Perelman and Fabry. 41
THE SHARP GENIUS OF JEAN-MICHEL FRANK IS CELEBRATED IN A BIG, FAT COFFEE-TABLE BOOK
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edonism, costume balls, and the opium-laden atmosphere of the 1920s, set Paris up for a cultural revival known as the Roaring Twenties—or as the French called them, les années folles (the crazy years)—at the very heart of which sat a gifted, albeit tragic Jean-Michel Frank, the protagonist of Assouline’s latest volume. A collection of archival photographs and illustrations, indirect accounts and literary excerpts are used to chronicle the French designer’s life and work in this large-format book. Jean-Michel Frank is an ode to the fashionable decorator’s love for all things sparse and beautiful, enclosed within a textured hardcover shaded somewhere between beige and white—perhaps a nod to its subject’s predilection for “non-colours”. The youngest of three and the son of a banker, Frank grew up in Paris’s upscale 16th arrondissement. (Diarist Anne Frank was his cousin). His distinguished social circle gave him the opportunity to round up an impressive clientele. The 1920s and 1930s saw Frank art directing interiors for hotels, penthouses, villas, and showrooms for the Parisian and Western haut monde, including Elsa Schiaparelli, Charles Templeton Crocker and Nelson Rockefeller.
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TEXT: SHRISTI SINGH. PHOTO: ROGI ANDRÉ/COURTESY OF CNAC/MNAM/DIST. RMN–GRAND PALAIS/ART RESOURCE.
LE STYLE C’EST L’HOMME
PHOTO: HARALD GOTTSCHALK.
He is credited with introducing Paris to luxe pauvre, his philosophy of ‘impoverished luxury’. Stripping interiors down to their essentials, finding beauty in simple proportions—all constituted le style Frank. His breakthrough came in 1926 when he was sought out by patrons Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles to transform their hôtel particulier. Sporting walls covered in parchment tiles, armchairs upholstered in leather, and rooms decorated with straw marquetry, anyone who walked into the fabled Noailles home would be looking at a Frank signature. He fashioned close to 800 furniture models over a span of two decades. Louis XV-style chairs brightened up Nelson Rockefeller’s Manhattan apartment; a monumental double door lent grandiosity to the Jorge Born villa in Buenos Aires; a quartz lamp punctuated Templeton Crocker’s Californian penthouse. Frank was many things: self-taught, depressed, brilliant, and while often referred to as a minimalist, this book offers nuances that prove otherwise. The designer strove for austerity in the spaces he built and worked alongside artists like Alberto Giacometti and Christian Bérard to achieve it. The latter’s trompe l’oeil masterpiece for Institut Guerlain is not only a lesson in visual illusion but a reminder of Frank’s faith in the collaborative process—“the result would be, at the very least, something of our time, and alive.” He embraced tradition just as he did modernity. “The noble frames that came to us from the past can receive today’s creations,” he had said. As illustrated over 300 pages, it was never going to be easy to fully comprehend the mechanics of his genius yet this Assouline volume is quite a deep dive.
Above: The living room in the Templeton Crocker penthouse, circa 1930, designed by Jean-Michel Frank, with the walls and ceiling covered in squares of parchment, a piano hidden behind a low folding screen, and a quartz block lamp.
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TEXT: RITUPRIYA BASU. PHOTOS: XANDER VERVOORT AND LEON VAN BOXTEL.
UNLIMITED EDITIONS THE LATEST PIECES BY BENGALURUBASED FURNITURE MAKER PHANTOM HANDS SHOWCASE ITS ROOTS IN INDIAN MODERNISM
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ven the most cursory glance at the modernist pieces of furniture crafted by Phantom Hands is enough to spot the gleam of hand-polished teak and the intricate rattan patterns that have now become synonymous with the studio’s designs. Founded by Deepak Srinath, the studio often collaborates with like-minded international designers, and handcrafts each of its pieces in its workshop in Bengaluru, in close partnership with a team of carpenters, polishers, cane weavers and upholsterers. Back in 2013, Phantom Hands began as an online catalogue for vintage furniture and antiques, but soon transformed into a furniture workshop with a sharp interest in contemporizing artisanal craftsmanship through modest design interventions. “Sifting through antiques led us to the discovery of some postindependence Indian design stories, such as Chandigarh’s modernist period, art deco furniture from Mumbai, and pieces
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from Ahmedabad that were inspired by the work of George Nakashima,” remembers founder Deepak Srinath. “Almost instantly, we were drawn to the idea of using traditional Indian woodworking techniques to craft contemporary objects and reedits of these modernist pieces of furniture that would effortlessly fit into our homes.” The heavy, all-pervasive influence of Indian modernism is impossible to miss in their latest collections, which were supposed to travel to Milan earlier this year, in what was to be Phantom Hands’ debut trip to Fuorisalone. Moving past the re-edits of armchairs by Pierre Jeanneret, the X+L collection upcycles wedges and bars of leftover teak to create a coffee table, a trestle table, a room divider, two lamps and a modular sofa set. Amsterdam-based designers Xander Vervoort and Leon van Boxtel added small tweaks to accentuate the texture of the wood. “To emphasize the beauty of the teak, we brushed the surfaces with steel to highlight the grain,” says Vervoort. The leggy ‘X+L Trestle Table’ (pictured) channels the compass legs that became the signature style of French mid-century modernism, and subsequently that of Chandigarh’s utilitarian furniture. “Our first encounter with the work of Pierre Jeanneret was love at first sight. So when Srinath asked us to design a collection for Phantom Hands inspired by the legacy of Indian modernism, it felt like all our passions came together,” says Boxtel. “Srinath and we share a similar aesthetic, and a love for—seemingly simple design.” The Mungaru and Tangali collections too celebrate subtle and considered design innovations. Crafted by the Japanese-Danish design duo INODA+SVEJE, the softer, organic shapes of the Mungaru pieces are a departure from the sharper edges and angles of Phantom Hands’ previous works, while the backrests and seats of the Tangali bench and daybed are woven in rattan patterns that are not commonly found in Indian furniture. “Innovative cane weavings were a core part of the design process of Tangali,” says Srinath. The studio pays keen attention to their creations, right down to the smallest details, like the names of their collections. “In Kannada, Tangali means cool breeze, while Mungaru means monsoon, which is the season when INODA+SVEJE make their yearly trips to Bengaluru,” says Srinath. Much of the nuances of the furniture—such as the finger joints, radius of the arms and legs and various joineries—are shaped by hand, using materials and craftsmanship that are nearly the same as was used in the 1950s. Unassuming in its simplicity, and backed by the richness of its local material palette and a deep reverence for the handworked, the best of Phantom Hands takes the foundational tenets of Indian modernism, and brings it right up to date. Facing page: In the X+L collection by Xander Vervoort and Leon van Boxtel, the iconic architecture of Chandigarh’s modernist buildings is translated into the legs of the ‘X+L Coffee Table’ that are slipped into the tabletop. Left: Vervoort and Boxtel brushed the teak to highlight the grain of the wood, as seen in the ‘X+L Trestle Table’.
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A BIG DESIGN
TEXT: TYREL RODRICKS. PHOTOS COURTESY OF AUDEMARS PIGUET.
DESIGNED BY THE BJARKE INGELS GROUP, THE MUSÉE ATELIER AUDEMARS PIGUET IN LE BRASSUS IS THE LATEST MASTERPIECE TO BE COMMISSIONED BY THE SWISS WATCHMAKER
The 25,800-square-foot Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet was seven years in the making, starting with a call for designs by Audemars Piguet in 2013.
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he quaint village of Le Brassus sits in the Vallée de Joux— widely regarded, along with Neuchâtel, as the birthplace of Swiss horology. It was in Le Brassus that, nearly a century and a half ago, Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet set up their watchmaking workshop. These same historical premises were expanded last month, with the opening of the Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet—a structure that has been seven years in the making. “The original building of the company is an extremely important part of our Musée Atelier. This is where the heart of Audemars Piguet started to beat in 1875,” says Sébastian Vivas, heritage and museum director for the watchmaker. Given the weight of this context for the project, when they reached out in 2013 for proposed designs from five architecture firms, their brief was “impossible to achieve”, says Vivas. Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group’s winning design struck a chord, earning appreciation despite its unusual spiral
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structure. As Vivas puts it, “Love at first sight—this is what the jury felt when they discovered Bjarke Ingels’s clever and elegant project.” The glass-and-steel pavilion looks crazily futuristic juxtaposed with Audemars Piguet’s oldest building, yet emerges from the landscape like just another outcrop on the plot of land upon which it sits. Vivas explains, “We chose this project for its capacity to play with the landscape and become part of it, for its ability to think forward while respecting the past, for its extreme attention to detail.” Despite the labyrinthine appearance of the museum, its interior is quite intuitive. As Ingels explains, “The way you move through the space, there is this non-verbal communication— as you enter, the slope starts propelling you down. The exhibition pavilion is one continuous space, but there’s such a clear trajectory through it that, without too much hand-holding, people naturally understand how to move through it.” The path inside spirals towards the centre before spiralling out again. Vivas adds, “The German museographer Atelier Brückner has imagined the visitor’s journey as a musical score, with themes introduced by surprising and interactive interludes. Visitors are first immersed in the origins of the Vallée de Joux. They discover how a network of talented watchmakers has transformed raw material into masterpieces of complications.” At the centre of this architectural galaxy, a bevy of complex timepieces orbit the ‘Universelle’ pocket watch from 1899 that remains the watchmaker’s most complicated creation. Three hundred masterpieces from the 18th to the 21st century are exhibited in the Musée Atelier, entrancing visitors in the watchmaker’s 145-year-long legacy. It’s a story that easily captivates, and even drew the architect into the world of horology. Ingels shares, “Until I met Sébastian seven years ago, I didn’t have a watch. But now I have this beautiful open-work thing on my wrist and sometimes I’m aware of this exposed escapement ticking like a little mechanical life form. It harvests energy from me—every time I move it. In that sense, [a watch] is literally a human-made mechanical life—which is quite beautiful.”
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Below: BIG founder Bjarke Ingels and Sébastian Vivas, heritage and museum director for Audemars Piguet. Bottom: The museum is adjacent to the heritage structure in which Audemars Piguet was founded in 1875.
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
` 200 MARCH-APRIL 2020 THE MOST BEAUTIFUL HOMES IN THE WORLD
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BHARAT SIKKA DOUGLAS FRIEDMAN FRANÇOIS HALARD IWAN BAAN MARTIN PARR MASSIMO LISTRI PRABUDDHA DASGUPTA RAGHU RAI SHILPA GUPTA
TEXT: KOMAL SHARMA. PHOTOS: NEVILLE SUKHIA.
Above: Cane and bamboo baskets being woven by trainees at the Heirloom Naga centre. Right: A girls’ hostel being built using locally available raw materials, and with the aid of the JSW prize money.
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HEIRLOOMS OF THE FUTURE THE 2019 JSW PRIZE FOR CONTEMPORARY CRAFTSMANSHIP WAS AWARDED TO HEIRLOOM NAGA, A TEXTILE AND WEAVING CENTRE IN DIMAPUR FOUNDED BY JESMINA ZELIANG
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ne of Jesmina Zeliangs’s earliest memories is of her late mother sitting in the courtyard of their home in Dimapur, Nagaland, weaving a shawl for her husband. “She would weave the Angami shawl; we call it ‘lohe’. It was an annual affair and my father would wrap that shawl around himself with such pride. She would weave for us children too. In that sense, my romance with handloom textiles began at a very young age.” Zeliang, 52, is the founder of Heirloom Naga, a textile studio based in Dimapur, which employs 450 Naga women, who weave from their own homes, creating textiles that draw inspiration from traditional Naga patterns and motifs, made for modern, urban homes. Zeliang comes across as shy and self-effacing and is strikingly bright and stylish. Her self-taught sensibility for design and a sensitive entrepreneurial spirit made her a very popular jury choice—and, eventually, the winner—of the annual JSW Prize for Contemporary Craftsmanship 2019-2020. Early this year, Sangita Jindal, her daughter Tarini and AD editor Greg Foster flew to Dimapur. “I wanted to get a deeper understanding of the work done by Jesmina,” says Mrs Jindal. The team spent a day seeing their studio, visiting the homes of weavers, enjoying the cultural fare and seeing the prize money put to good use—to build a hostel for 25 girls. What they saw was an agile, sustainable, culturally rooted system of working. “At the outset, I was impressed by the natural beauty and cultural richness of the place, the warmth and hospitality of the people, the memorable vegetarian meals. But most of all, the fact that Heirloom Naga empowers about 450 women weavers creating beautiful traditional textiles and working from their own homes was something that really stood out for me,” says Mrs Jindal. Zeliang recalls her journey. “It all started as a small backyard project with five women who came and lived with me and wove
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Above: Jesmina Zeliang and Sangita Jindal walk to the village chief’s house in Tsithrongse village. Facing page, top: Chilo Koza, one of their finest weavers, weaving the masterpiece for JSW. Facing page, bottom: Weavers of Heirloom Naga in the village of Sovima, Dimapur.
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some samples for me. I was married and had a two-year-old son.” Her first samples were put up in a display window at Santushti Market Complex in New Delhi. It was 1993. From that point on, there was no looking back. She began travelling to Delhi and Mumbai, knocking on the doors of stores. Some of her earliest clients were Shyam Ahuja, Fabindia, the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, and Contemporary Arts & Crafts, then at Nepean Sea Road in Mumbai. In time, she began exporting to Crate and Barrel, Wisteria, The Conran Shop, and Massimo Dutti among others. “From just 5 weavers we grew to 20, from 20 to 50, and within the next two years we were already working with more than 150 weavers. We grew quickly because we had a distinct style.” Zeliang’s aesthetic as well as business sensibility was spot on. She started weaving in pure cotton at a time when there had been a shift to acrylic fibres or cashmilon. She has been instrumental in introducing the cluster model. “I knew no such jargon in our simple activities back then. For me, it made sense to group weavers together. Slowly, the clusters grew because our orders were getting large.” Early on, Zeliang had the foresight to see the flaws of migration. “In the early days, when I met people outside the state, interacting with other producers from different parts of India, I would see photos of their factories. They were big but they were dark, grim set-ups. At the time, part of me felt inadequate. Today, I am so satisfied that we do not displace our artisans from their homes. My pride really lies in skilling many hundreds of weavers till date.” These days, Zeliang and her team of weavers are busy crafting a masterpiece, which was a mandate for the winner of the JSW Prize for Contemporary Craftsmanship. In the works is a woven tapestry of different motifs from Naga tribes. “We have 16 major tribes and several subtribes. Each tribe has multiple textiles and meanings attached to them. For us, these textiles define status, gender, power, wealth. They are symbols of identity. They link our past, present and future,” says Zeliang, with a hint of pride, as she ought to feel. She has literally woven a living, thriving, continuing tapestry beginning with that first evocative childhood memory of her mother weaving in the courtyard.
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KING OF COUTURE
TEXT: SUNIL SETHI. PHOTOS: ASHISH SAHI.
THIS YEAR, TARUN TAHILIANI CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF HIS LABEL. AD LOOKS BACK FROM HIS MAGNIFICENT HEADQUARTERS DESIGNED BY STEPHANE PAUMIER
Tarun Tahiliani stands amidst an array of dress forms in the mezzanine archive room. Above the concrete vaulted ceiling is a grove of champa trees. Curved cupboards along the walls store swatches from past years. Above right: The formal entrance to the brick-clad factory designed by French architect Stephane Paumier leads directly into the atelier’s double-height reception. Inspired by the arches of Mughal porticos, the exterior camouflages interior volumes and rises to the building’s entire height.
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arun Tahiliani’s life was peripatetic from the very start. This was partly due to his naval officer father, who moved base (and in fact headed the Indian navy from 1984 to 1987), and his travelling education—a year squeezed in at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi, between Doon School in Dehradun and an MBA from Wharton. But 1995 was the year Tahiliani made a decisive professional shift. He started his tiny production unit—six tailoring machines and one master cutter—in a cramped first-floor flat in south Delhi. It was the month of May and boiling hot, he remembers; and the move to New Delhi from his hometown in Mumbai, in hindsight, proved prescient. “Delhi had a cross-cultural view, access to the crafts belt of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Kashmir. The place breathed centuries of history and it had clearly defined seasons— people wore jamawar shawls in winter. There was no question in my mind that Delhi was the fashion capital of the country.” From that modest beginning 25 years ago, the Tarun Tahiliani brand today encompasses luxury couture, bridal wear, and bespoke architecture and interior design. Yet the man behind the label has the effervescence and energy of a 21-year-old. The years melt away as the designer—now 57—recalls his trajectory in a captivating mix of candid observation, rib-tickling anecdote and no-holds barred opinion. Tahiliani’s enterprise now employs a 150-strong workforce that occupies 45,000 square feet of space in a three-storeyed, brick-faced structure of soaring concrete interiors, skylights and roof gardens, designed by the Delhi-based French architect Stephane Paumier. In every respect—including the building’s frontage shaped as the designer’s ‘double T’ logo—the office-cum-factory raises the bar in the otherwise nondescript industrial estate in Gurugram where it is located. For Paumier, the Tahiliani project was his first for an Indian client. He had arrived in India in the late 1990s on an overseas government programme in lieu of military service, and gone on to win acclaim for a number of French projects including the Alliance Française in Delhi, the French Institute in Puducherry and the Franco-German embassy in Dhaka. As luck would have it, Tahiliani and he were well acquainted; the two had been neighbours in a Mehrauli building where they ran their ateliers before Delhi’s regulations for manufacturing units forced Tahiliani to move outside the city.
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Above: A bird’s eye view of the interior from the first floor conveys the building’s cross-section plan, from the mezzanine with its mannequins, to the draping station and pattern-making tables below. Different tailoring ateliers flank the central court. Facing page, top: On the roof is a large photo studio, inspired by Irving Penn’s New York studio, used for documenting clothes, shooting campaigns, catalogue work and press lunches. Sliding panels and glazed skylights flood it with natural light that can be modulated. Facing page, bottom: Tahiliani’s sketch of the Bloom evening gown that concluded his 2019 show and will launch this year as part of an evening wear collection.
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Whether in his home or his lavish showroom in the shadow of the Qutab Minar (AD, October 2017) Tahiliani is typically engaged in every design detail. However, the empty industrial plot in Haryana failed to enthuse him. “I was frankly tired of dealing with municipal structures and officials and could have done with any kind of space,” he confesses, crediting his sister and business partner Tina Tahiliani’s insistence that they commission an innovative, expansive building. “She took the long view, and felt that as it was to serve as HQ for all the company’s operations, we should aim high, and suggested bringing in Stephane.” Paumier was immediately excited. “I was given a tight budget with a brief that demanded natural light for cutting, sampling, tailoring and embroidery sections, as well as Tarun’s atelier.” His final design was a modernist take on Islamic buildings, where the facade camouflages interior volumes—a place of vaulted ceilings, built-in skylights and enclosed gardens. “Once Tarun became involved, he came up with inspired references such as the 16th-century Jamali Kamali mosque in Mehrauli. In every way, he was an ideal client—trusting and non-interfering.” Although it took two years (2008-2010) to complete, it was, Paumier notes, the cheapest building he designed. “Tarun understands where to economize. For example, he suggested mirror frames of cement and plaster rather than expensive wood.” The expansion of the brand and production under one roof has led to additions and amendments to the original building. There is a boardroom, an archive and library and—Tahiliani’s pride and joy—a plate glass photo studio on the rooftop inspired by Irving Penn’s New York studio. “It’s used for documenting clothes, for press lunches, shooting campaigns and all the catalogue work. Because of its sliding panels and skylights, it is a wonderful space to modulate natural light.” With Tarun Tahiliani’s natural talent for showmanship, of turning 25 years of the label’s anniversary into a celebration, the designer had planned a series of events in Delhi and Mumbai including the release of a special volume on his journey and twilight walkthroughs at Qutab Minar, a stone’s throw from his glamorous Delhi showroom. Some of the events did take place earlier this year before the Covid-19 outbreak; the rest have been put on hold. It has given the designer a much-needed opportunity to reconsider the future of the fashion business, of how inexpensive readyto-wear will take precedence over couture. He refuses to be downhearted however. “We have to get off the treadmill and learn to marry the accessible with the available. There will always be a market for good, well-made clothes.”
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RE VE NGE S P E NDI N G CLOC KW I S E F RO M TOP L E FT: C A S S I N A ‘C a p i t o l C o mp l ex ’ c h a i r fro m t h e Co nt em po ra n ei c o l l e ct i o n . C C-TA P I S ‘S u pe r Ro un d H ot ’ h a n d ma d e r ug (8 feet ) fro m th e Sup e r Fa ke c o l l ect i o n de si g ne d by B et h a n L a ura Wo o d , ` 7 ,8 0 , 00 0 , at So urce s U nl i mi t e d . V I S I O N N A I R E ‘Kyl o Fra med ’ c h a i r f ro m t h e A nn i ve rsa r y co l l ect i o n . A R K E T I P O F I R E N Z E ‘Pri n c e’ d i ni n g t a b l e de si g ne d by G i us ep p e Vi ga n o . P O R R O Cu p b o a rd fro m t h e O ffs ho re c o l l ect i o n de si g ne d by Pi ero L i s s o n i , at Furn i t ec h . B O C O N C E P T ‘S h elt e r’ t a b l e l a mp , ` 3 7 , 45 0 .
M ODERN MOOD C LO C K W I SE FROM TO P L E FT: Q A A L E E N ‘Pr i sma’ r ug ( 8x 5 fe et ) . R O C H E B O B O I S ‘A si a’ va s es, e n a me ll ed c era mi c a nd wo o d ro d , d e s i g n e d by S o p h i e L a rg er. H AV I L A N D ‘Je l ly fi s h’ b re a d ( t o p) a nd de ss er t p l at es fro m t h e Oc é a n B l eu c o l l e ct i on , at E mery S t ud i o . d raw e rs , st a r t s at ` 4 5 , 50 0 . B O N A L D O ‘Ti rel l a’ a r mc ha i r d es i g ne d by Pa o l o G ra s s el l i fro m t he 20 2 0 c o ll ect io n , at G ra n d eur I nt e ri o rs . P O LT R O N A F R A U ‘Is a d o ra’ c h a i r d es ig n ed by Ro b ert o La zzero n i .
STYLIST MITALEE MEHTA
G U L M O H A R L A N E ‘M a l a b a r H i l l’ c he st of
FINE LINE S CLOCK W I SE FR OM TO P L EFT: C E C C O T T I C O L L E Z I O N I ‘D . R.D . P’ s ofa d es i g ne d by R o b er t o L a z z ero n i , at Po lt ro na Fra u. M I N O T T I S t o o l f ro m t he Ta p e C o rd o ut d o o r c o l l e ct i o n , st a rt s at ` 3 ,0 8 , 05 0 , at D esi g n I t a l i a no . F L E X F O R M ‘S veva S oft ’ a rmc h a i r f ro m t h e i nd o o r co l l ect i o n . G I A N F R A N C O F E R R È H O M E ‘M at r i x’ c offe e t a b l e, J u mb o G ro up , at Se etu Ko h l i H o me. H O F ‘J a lsa’ ch a i r, M a n n Si ng h co l l ect i o n ,
` 51 , 00 0 . B O H I N C ST U D I O ‘Pl a net a ri a’ fl o o r l i g ht ,
` 5, 1 1, 0 0 0.
S I T B A C K,
ENJOY
C LOC K W I SE FRO M TO P L EFT: B A X T E R ‘B e lt ’ s ofa d es i g n e d by Fe deri co Pe ri , at So urc es U nl i mi t ed . P R E C I O S A ‘Pea r l D ro p’ st at eme nt l ig ht . I Q R U P + R I T Z ‘We Wo rk ’ l a pto p t ab l e, ` 27 , 4 80 . L E M A ‘B ul è’ t a b l e d es i g n e d by C h ia ra A nd re at t i , at Sp a zi o . T U R R I ‘Vi n e’ c h a i r fro m t h e Vi ne co ll ect i on , at S o urc e s U nl i mi t ed . E T R O H O M E I N T E R I O R S E mb ro i de red c ush io n ,
` 3 6, 0 0 0, ‘Pa i s l ey Pri nt Ve lvet ’ cush i on , ` 1 8, 0 0 0, J umb o G ro up , at S e etu Koh l i H ome. Fo r d et a i l s , s e e S t o c ki st s .
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WELCOMHOTEL AMRITSAR
THE LAST WORD IN TRAVEL FEB-MARCH 2020 | 150
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Why Taipei & Portugal are hot places to eat at now + India’s 40 chefs under 40 you should know
WHERE TO GO IN 2020 Hip holiday spots from Kyoto to Cairo RETURN TO NAGALAND Young locals back home to mak cool chang
DISCOVER TAHITI & KYRGYZSTAN + NEW HOTELS IN DHARAMSHALA & MALDIVES + INDIA’S TOP 50 RESTAUR From left: Chefs Dhruv Oberoi, Kavan Kuttappa, Pooja Dhingra, Thomas Zacharias, Prateek Sadhu & Amninder Sandhu at Hyatt Regency Delhi’s fa
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THANK YOU, HOME Every issue of AD is a celebration of home. But never have we been so grateful. In this edition, we look at how home has quickly morphed to be the centre of our universe. The study (please don’t call it a home office) makes a comeback as we all try to carve a professional space within our personal environment. Photographer Sunhil Sippy looks from one tower to the other in his Rear Window-referencing shoot of life seen from inside one of India’s most prestigious residential buildings. And we showcase the late, great Zarina Hashmi’s floor-plan drawings of many of the houses she lived in—lines that are blurred between walls and abstraction. For pure inspiration, we have incredible new houses by some of the greatest names in interior design, including the first project by Christian Liaigre in India. Stay home, enjoy and be grateful.
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D E S K I N G
As working from home becomes a continuing reality, AD looks at the desk, from classic and modern to Batman dramatic
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Previous spread: Zaha Hadid’s ‘Amida’ desk, inspired by Padmé Amidala from the Star Wars series, 2015 (photo courtesy of Disney). Above: Set in a corner of Diane von Furstenberg’s Connecticut country house, this delicate 19th-century French desk—atop which is a bronze by Anh Duong—is paired with a modern swirl-back, three-footed brass chair by Salvador Dalí (photo by François Halard/Trunk Archive). Below, left: Anouska Hempel’s master bedroom in her Wiltshire home, with a cane armchair next to a 19th-century Louis XVI–style desk with side leaves (photo by Tim Beddow). Facing page: This period room at the Met, Fifth Avenue, New York features a writing table, cartonnier and wall clock that is originally from the Palais Paar, 30 Wollzeile, Vienna, Austria, circa 1765–72 (photo courtesy of the Met).
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Left: A desk designed by artist Daniel Arsham for his Long Island home. The lamp is by Ettore Sottsass (photo by Jason Schmidt; styling by Martin Bourne; artwork © Alex Gardner). Below: The Eames Foundation’s office, located in the studio of the Eames House, 2013 (© Eames Office LLC; photo by Leslie Schwartz).
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Above: A David Chipperfield designed bespoke desk at Fayland House, outside London. The glass vase is by Timo Sarpaneva for Iittala; the ‘THIN’ task lamp from Juniper Design; the desk chair from Vitra’s ID Trim collection; and the armchair and footstool by Børge Mogensen, 1960s (photo by Stephan Julliard).
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Above: George Nakashima’s ‘Conoid’ desk in American black walnut at his studio in Pennsylvania (photo courtesy of George Nakashima Woodworkers, New Hope, PA). Below: A veneered writing desk in burr poplar by Rose Uniacke (photo courtesy of Rose Uniacke).
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In a Manhattan triplex designed by Belgian minimalist Vincent Van Duysen, the study features a table and bookshelf by Charlotte Perriand paired with armchairs by Pierre Jeanneret and a desk lamp from Wyeth (photo by François Halard; styling by Anita Sarsidi. Artworks by Alexander Calder © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Sol LeWitt © 2018 The LeWitt Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Bruce Nauman © 2018 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York).
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Above: George Nelson’s ‘Swag Leg’ desk, made in 1958 continues to be cooler than ever (photo courtesy of Herman Miller). Below: Frank Lloyd Wright at his desk in the studio at Taliesin, 1957 (photo by Edgar Obma/The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation). Facing page: Frank Gehry jumps on his desk that he designed as part of his line of cardboard furniture, 1972 (photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images).
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N A T U R E M O R T E LIFE IMITATES ART IN OUR SERIES OF STILL, LIFES. MAKE YOUR OWN FOR OUR #STILLCOMMALIFE INSTAGRAM CAMPAIGN STYLIST PRIYANKA SHAH PHOTOGRAPHER SAHIL BEHAL
(From foreground) ‘Nymph’ vase by Versace by Rosenthal, Thomas Goode. ‘Summer Seat: Double’ bench, Rubberband. ‘Kashmir’ wool hand-knotted rug by Sanjana, Jaipur Rugs. Chinese drum side table with mother-of-pearl inlay, Taherally’s. Ebony cut-out table, Mahendra Doshi. Brass diya with tortoise base, Moorthy’s.
(Facing page, from foreground) ‘Corbel Blue Green’ hand-tufted bamboo silk carpet from the Forma collection, Hands. Silver articulated fish, Phillips Antiques. Washbasin by Kreoo, C Bhogilal West-End. Bronze oil container, Sarita Handa. ‘Ice Cube’ stool from the Water series, Yasanche by Yashesh Virkar. ‘Upholstered Armless Chair’ from the Project Chandigarh collection by Phantom Hands, Le Mill. Wooden four-leg pedestal, Taherally’s. Wooden tribal mask, The Antique Story.
(Facing page, from foreground) ‘Patina - 41040 000’ rug from the Abstract collection, D’Decor Rugs. Ceramic head, Mahendra Doshi. Wooden coffee table, The Great Eastern Home. ‘Caspian’ stool, Sarita Handa. Rattan chair, Baro. ‘L Bent’ lamp, Arjun Rathi.
Art deco cedar-and-rosewood handles, Pooranawalla. Cushion in ‘3735 Makhmali’ fabric from the Antarmahal collection, Atmosphere. Bastar folk art tiger, Phillips Antiques. Model of staircase, Mahendra Doshi. ‘Model E’ model car by Floris Hovers, Rubberband. ‘Pipe’ side table, Hatsu. Antique Sita head from Odisha, Phillips Antiques.
(Facing page, from foreground) ‘Aakar Natural’ wool and bamboo silk hand-knotted rug by Kavi, Jaipur Rugs. Metal foot, Red Blue & Yellow. ‘Lepli’ stool by Kensaku Oshiro, Poltrona Frau Group. ‘Fiber Lounge Chair (Tube Base)’ by Iskos-Berlin for Muuto, Angel Ventures. ‘Amara Natural’ box, Sarita Handa. Ceramic vase, Defurn.
(From foreground) Cushion in ‘5505 Contrail Mineral’ fabric, Atmosphere. ‘Rawaya’ centrepiece, Good Earth. Cut-glass candle stands, Sarita Handa. ‘Ottawa’ side table, BoConcept. Wooden chair, The Great Eastern Home. Antique bronze Bhuta mask, Phillips Antiques. ‘Mush’ pouffe, Script.
ASSIISTED BY: DRISHA JAIN. PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: MITALEE MEHTA. PRODUCTION: CUTLOOSE PRODUCTIONS. FOR DETAILS, SEE STOCKISTS.
ZARINA PORTFOLIO ZARINA HASHMI (1937-2020)
AD celebrates the life of the great Indian artist, who passed away in New York in April, with a portfolio that focuses on the floor plans of the houses she lived in. Zarina was raised in Aligarh, spoke fluent Urdu and developed a love for uncluttered spaces and simplicity of form early on in her life, especially on trips with her parents to Fatehpur Sikri and the courtyard of the Badshahi Masjid in Lahore. She experienced the geometry of patterns, the idea of movement and pause, open courtyards, and enclosures in Islamic architecture. To her, the play of light and shadows was all-inspiring and became integral to her developing artistic vision. She was a child shaped by the trauma of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan that separated the closeknit family when she was 10; her work is accompanied by poetic ruminations on exile and a melancholic cosmopolitanism. The artist captured the disruptions in her unsettled life that unfolded in the layouts of all the homes she lived in—New Delhi to Bangkok, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and, finally, New York. “Memory is the only lasting possession we have. I have made my life the subject of my work, using the images of home, the places I have visited and the stars I have looked up to.” (Zarina, Directions to My House, 2018)
TEXT ROOBINA KARODE
The artworks have been sourced from multiple portfolios: Home is a Foreign Place, 1999 (pgs 89, 90, 92, 93); These Cities Blotted into the Wilderness (Adrienne Rich after Ghalib), 2003 (pg 91); Homes I Made/A Life in Nine Lines, 1997 (pgs 94, 95); and Folding House, 2013 (pgs 96, 97). PHOTOS FARZAD OWRANG, ROBERT WEDEMEYER
ALL IMAGES © ZARINA; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LUHRING AUGUSTINE, NEW YORK.
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The most poignant image I recall in Zarina’s art is a simple hand-drawn floor plan of her father’s house in Aligarh that unfolds the layout of a once fully functional home, with different rooms, sections and spaces, all marked in Urdu. Belonging to a family of architects, it was not unusual for me to be instantly captivated by this memory-image, and in the way that ‘space’ and ‘structure’ preoccupied her. | (Abba’s) Father’s House (1898-1994 ) makes the viewer navigate the courtyard, the garden and threshold before entering the private domain of the house. The segregation of male and female quarters was discerned by a mixture of Western-style decor and traditional elements. Abba’s House is where Zarina spent her formative years in the comfort and security of her family. Little did she know, the house in Aligarh—which she would leave behind (from which she was first displaced during the Partition in 1947 as a 10-year-old) to take many paths and travel many temporary destinations—would become the quintessential image and the central premise of her art practice. | Her father’s interpretation of architecture was historical while her mother’s approach was more poetic and often melancholic. Zarina’s consciousness got deeply rooted in these informal forms of learning, and her artistic inclination embraced the abstract language of architecture, geometry, mathematics and maps. The artist’s father, a historian and professor in Aligarh, inculcated in her a fascination for books. Her love for books drew her to paper. “I loved the resilience, the fragility of the pages that held such unforgettable texts, and the portability. So paper was a natural choice for me. I have always loved organic materials that are born from the earth and go back to earth. In my work I have witnessed how paper changes colour, ages, and wrinkles just like skin.” Her developed sensitivity towards the material made her choose different handmade and other quality paper to print her woodcuts and etchings. She subjected the paper
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t o staining, folding, threading, puncturing and sewing, also sculpting with paper pulp and making paper casts. Fragility and lightness of material was effectively used to create an impression of solidity and weight. Paper remained central to Zarina’s practice, both as a surface to print on and as a material with its own properties and history. | The austerity of form and the clarity of the visual image were imperative to her language of expression. The interplay of text and image in her art echoed, in some strange way, the coexistence of geometric symbols and calligraphy in Islamic architecture. She intensified its purpose, with words and text acting as signifiers, layering her work with multivalent meanings. Titles of several of her works including ‘journey’ and ‘destination’ tend to take on mystical interpretations. | Zarina’s ruminations on house and home, an inert structure and a palpable emotion respectively, find their clearest articulation in the artist’s etchings, Homes I Made/A Life in Nine Lines (1997). The language of abstraction in her works emphasizes a severe formal reduction, paring down the visual form to its structural simplicity and purity. She revealed the power of lines as scaffolds/bare bones to articulate the schematic image of the house (simply in nine lines). Putting to use sparse visual elements, she presented the most complex ideas through the use of repetition, rhythm and restraint. Perhaps, the endlessly changing floor plans in ‘Homes I Made’ talk about the artist’s failure to grow new roots, or find foundation at one place, leaving her dream home (and family) in a state of perennial incompleteness and repeated abandonment. | Quite in the same vein, ‘home’ in Zarina is an evacuated image, often evoking the uncanny symbolism of a tombstone. This visual slippage between the home and tomb, or the notions of natality and mortality, complicates Zarina’s philosophy, verging on both melancholia and nostalgia. The skeletal image, devoid of its inhabitants, appears as the ruin of home. Consider Father’s House: The detailed floor plan, with its zenanas and living rooms, corridors and thresholds, enclosures and openings, kitchen and library, is not an architectural diagram for a house to be built. Rather, it refers, through acts of remembering and forgetting, to the unfulfilled dream of a family displaced and fragmented—a memory house unbuilt. And lost forever. | “Once I lived in a house of many rooms, I walk from room to room. Touching the walls. Boundaries of despair.” | Zarina’s art practice stands out in the narratives of modern and contemporary art for many reasons. Firstly, it offers a perspective radically different from the mainstream narrative of modernism, which has historically been shaped by a Euro-American and male-centric art world. As a child shaped by the trauma of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, which separated the close-knit family when she was 10, accompanied by poetic ruminations
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on exile and a melancholic cosmopolitanism, Zarina’s minoritarian identity appears in these works not as a political statement simply polemicizing the parochial majoritarianism of the time, but as an identity in ruins, silently holding the dark force field of modernity and nation formations, which ravaged her narratives of self and location, accountable and answerable. This sense of ruined identity is more palpably visible in the artist’s poetic and calligraphic use of Urdu, her mother tongue, which also represents a subcontinental civilization on the verge of extinction and oblivion. | A set of 36 woodcut and letterpress prints, Home is a Foreign Place (1999) indicates an emotive phrase of un-belonging, deconstructing the idea of home and permanence. Like a scribe, Zarina draws lines that become words and images; she abstracts, extracts and retrieves her experiences through a minimal gesture. For instance, Muddat (Time Span) acquires a spatial dimension through the measure and count of deep-cut lines. Raasta (Road) is an intersection of a horizontal and vertical line and Faasla (Distance) is a horizontal line that runs across the page—for her, from Aligarh to New York. The raw feel and touch of the paper and her gouged marks accentuated the choice for a monochromatic image. | The melancholic aesthetic that accompanies Zarina’s unsettled life with unmade homes and abandoned houses takes an intriguing turn when the artist shifts her attention to the cities she lived in. ‘Cities I Called Home’ (2010), a portfolio of five woodcut prints depicting the aerial view of different urban locations where the artist lived, is as diagrammatic and removed as her Homes I Made/A Life in Nine Lines flattened into a geometric grid. The architecture of the city, with its maze of roads
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and alleyways, appears like wrinkles on dead skin, without the flesh and blood of the terrain. She even made prints commemorating cities razed or marked by violence and conflict, including Sarajevo, Beirut, Baghdad and Kabul. The displaced sense of home extends to the world to critically reflect on migration, diaspora, dislocation and exile. It takes on complex dimensions and evolves into a heavily condensed metaphor, referring to the personal, spiritual, familial, linguistic, national and cosmopolitan sense of belonging and inhabitation all at once. | “My home is my hiding place, a house with four walls, sometimes with four wheels.” | The modest envelope-form of the house is transformed by Zarina with each iteration. The house is folded, unfolded, placed on wheels, given wings to fly, emptied and readied as a container waiting to be filled. ‘Folding House’ (2014), one of the most compelling series in black and gold, using the technique of collaging, makes us reflect on the potency of the modest-sized image. Using the generic house form, Zarina embeds, in each of these 25 petite and delicately collaged houses, her distilled vision alongside her conflicted and unresolved emotions—a house split in the middle by a dividing line alludes to the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, the dividing line also gesturing that lightning struck and destroyed the home, a phrase in Urdu (bijli giri ghar par aur saara chaman jalaa diya). In another one, we see a house with its doors closed and sealed. In yet another, a nomad’s tent and then another of a house desecrated into ruins. | “I am still making art and still thinking of home...with ink and paper. I am making small houses, folded houses, dark houses, empty houses. I have been using sumi ink to dye my paper. It’s a transformative liquid. It seeps into every fibre of my paper, swallowing all colour with its deep black darkness and scenting my work with the fragrance of burnt incense.” | The precariousness of life itself is accentuated through the play on the duality of darkness and light, fragility and resilience, despair and hope in Zarina’s works. In fact, towards the end of her career, the stars and cosmos also enter the orbit of her ruminations, as if the quintessential aerial view in her art reversed its gaze: looking up instead of looking down. It is quite intriguing, and inspiring, to see that an artistic pursuit that began from the domestic interiors of a marginalized Muslim life, navigating through the inhospitable terrains of different cities and nations, finally reached the universal. The architecture of earthly ruins is finally replaced by a celestial architecture, and one’s sense of belonging in the cosmos—perhaps the true meaning of being cosmopolitan. Roobina Karode is director and chief curator at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi. ‘ZARINA/A Life in Nine Lines’ is on at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art until 30 November 2020.
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REAR WINDOW PORTFOLIO FROM ONE TOWER TO THE NEXT
Being under lockdown in a city that lives vertically has invoked a new kind of voyeurism—peering into others’ lives while being looked at ourselves. But also, to pause and notice the staggering residential architecture of Mumbai. And for some, the view outside the window is spectacular to say the least. When AD asked longtime film-maker and photographer Sunhil Sippy to shoot from his apartment, it wasn’t without intent. We had our eye on Mumbai’s most iconic twin towers, The Imperial, hoping to acquire an insider’s view of the night skyline from that vantage point. Designed by tower-man Hafeez Contractor, The Imperial towers were, until very recently, the tallest buildings in the city at approximately 830 feet or 60 storeys. With original apartment interiors designed by Pinakin Patel, Neterwala & Aibara and American firm Craig Nealy Architects, plus views of the Mahalaxmi race course, the sprawling work district of Lower Parel and the Arabian Sea in the distance, living in The Imperial is faintly cinematic. “I’ve lived here for 10 years now. As a street photographer, I was always pointing my camera outwards, never once considering the subject at my doorstep. The constraints of lockdown provoked me to look inwards, at my own home and community, capturing the inherent drama of the space at night. It revealed an unusual and unexpected intimacy,” said Sippy, as he set his lens on his rear window, for AD.
PHOTOGRAPHER SUNHIL SIPPY
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IN A SHORT PERSONAL ESSAY, WRITER RAJA SEN EXPLORES THE PERSONAL YET CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE OF SEEING AND BEING SEEN ook out the window. The promise of normalcy we harbour as we gaze at masked strangers is matched by the advertisement of fulfilment we create for them, should they happen to look in. Our crammed megacities position us like television sets for anyone—from the street below or the building next door—to peep into and assess. We shrug off the peril of surveillance because we don’t have the time to look, or to assume someone else would. Most of us could position a Rear Window–style telescope and pry into a nearby apartment, but why should we? Who would stare into ours? The world has always been too busy passing by. Suddenly, nobody is going anywhere. Being shut in has changed our relationship with our houses, and the way we consume spaces. Like all revolutions, this began with the bookshelves. We began art-directing them for video calls, giving lofty literature pride of place, tucking popular fiction offscreen. Without us dressing up, we tend to shelves and walls with attention normally reserved for picking out shoes and neckties. The drapes are flung wide open to allow a trickle of light and life, normalcy and noise. What better possible time to spy, and to be spied upon? To me, this evokes Jacques Tati’s exquisite 1967 masterpiece PlayTime, perhaps the only comedy actually about architecture, a film with visual gags set around the spatial paradoxes created by reflections and angles, set in a Paris where the Eiffel is only glimpsed in a glass door. That astonishing film features an extended sequence Tati called the “shopwindow apartments” scene, where beloved hero Monsieur Hulot (played by the director) is ushered in to see an old acquaintance’s house while the camera stays—bravely and fantastically—out on the street.
The apartment he visits has a giant plate-glass window looking out onto the screen, as if it were a showroom pitching the idea of a family. Nobody strolling past cares to look in, and we can’t hear what is being said as introductions are made, televisions are switched on, cigarettes offered. A majestic wide-angle shot sets up four such apartments—two stacked atop two more—like a boxy four-panelled comic strip drawn by a modern cartoonist, lives separated by black negative space. While characters ignore the transparency of the window, audiences are urged to ignore the opacity of the wall separating the apartments. A man preparing for bed takes off his clothes, while next door, a woman watching television leans intently forward. Emphasizing the lack of boundaries between inside and outside, between public and private, the side-on visual suggests a man in one apartment performing a striptease for a willing lady in another. We are all now that man, we are all now that lady. (In the language of 1990s’ sitcoms: we are all Friends, we are all the ‘Ugly Naked Guy’ they would stare at from across the street.) My television faces the street, and I’ve caught myself drawing the curtains when watching Shark Tank. Being observed, it appears, has allowed a certain sense of best-foot-forward to creep into my television habits. Just as we would never announce everything we eat or listen to or read on social media, here too we feel a need not to reveal our guiltiest pleasures. Tati once said the window scene could only be truly understood if we sensed an identical building across the street. That idea of homogeneous housing has never felt more acute. Our apartments might be different sizes, our buildings may be chalk and cheese, yet the virus has shackled us the same way. We are goldfish in square bowls.
WRITER RITUPRIYA BASU PHOTOGRAPHER AMBROISE TEZENAS
PHOTO: ERIC MORIN.
The sandblasted oak, pine and cedar panelling in the custom furniture hints at Christian Liaigre’s indelible love for wood. The gilded brass of the pendant light reflects the sharpest light of the day, letting it bounce off the white walls.
Above left: The long corridors that connect the palatial house double as receptacles for art. Seen here is a stone sculpture by Dutch artist Mathieu Nab. Above right: The dining area, which overlooks a small backyard, is filled with patches of light that filter through the geometric patterns of the oak mashrabiyyas. A tray of summer fruits sits on the dining table, custom-designed by Liaigre. Facing page: A sleek black line runs along the handrail of the staircase that leads to the private areas on the second level of the house. The minimal geometry of the handrail would later inspire the stairs at the Liaigre studio at 77 Faubourg Saint-HonorĂŠ in Paris.
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Above left: In the master bedroom, Liaigre swaps dark wood for natural brushed oak. The use of metal too is light-handed. The golden details in the ‘Mante’ sconce and the wall panels offset the whiteness of the colour palette. Above right: A shaft of light pooling in from a slit in the ceiling casts geometric shadows on an alcove in the master bath, wrapped in white Carrara marble. Facing page: The quiet passageways that lead to the private nooks are often where the light changes; the sharp oblique rays of the day are tempered to form a hazy glow that creates a soft and muted ambience in the bedrooms. A custom Liaigre fan cools the area on humid days.
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A swimming pool flanked by an imposing staircase sits in the centre of the property. The rectilinear patterns of the interiors extend to the outdoors too, as seen in the handrail of the stairs, which traces a sharp, graphic line.
arefully tucked away in the quiet neighbourhoods of Lutyens’ Delhi is French interior designer Christian Liaigre’s latest and rather well-kept secret. The modernist home, which reinvents the interiors of centuriesold Indian palaces, is Liaigre’s first project in India, and an adventurous one at that. Spread across a sweeping 46,000 square feet, the house took over seven years to complete, and became one of the final projects Liaigre worked on at the close of his 35-year-long career at his eponymous Paris studio. Famed for designing private residences for Karl Lagerfeld, Bryan Adams and Calvin Klein, Liaigre retired in 2016, and handed over the reins of the design studio to long-time collaborator Frauke Meyer. Back in Delhi, Meyer finished the project exactly how Liaigre first imagined it: the mansion—with architecture by Singapore-based SCDA and interiors by Liaigre—slips somewhere between the idea of a family home and a contemporary mahal. “From the get-go, we were struck by the sheer scale of the property,” remembers Meyer. “We knew it would take some time to understand and tame the space.” The brief by the homeowners was entirely functional, and set the tone for the project: they were looking for a space that would fluidly transition between quiet, private corners and open, communal areas, and that would welcome the three generations of the family. As a response to the brief, Meyer created a contrast between the two spaces that quietly plays out through the house. Reaching back into history, the team studied Mughal architecture and the interiors of Indian palaces to understand the constant dialogue between public and personal spaces. With its pared-back elegance, the house echoes all of the studio’s telltale signatures: a light-handed touch coupled with an intelligent use of space and, especially, light. “Outside, the building’s geometry dominates, softened by the garden; inside, the glowing white of the Carrara marble floor, columns and walls allows for a choreography of contrasts chiefly achieved thanks to natural light,” notes Meyer. Daylight either directly glides into the house, or is softened by oak mashrabiyyas, latticed with geometric patterns. The contrasts are manifold. Sharp, intense light in the reception spaces highlights the strong material palette—dark wood, black lacquer and touches of gold and saffron in the fabrics—and accentuates the 23-foot-high ceiling of the salon and dining room, both lit by glinting chandeliers. The dappled light in the private areas, like the bedrooms, draws the eye to the softened contrasts of red lacquer and muted colour palettes. Meyer tempers the quality of light in a space not just through proportion or colour, but also through the textures of materials: the gilded brass of the chandeliers, which reflects the crisp light in the living room, is used only sparingly in the bedrooms, giving way to natural brushed oak and tufted fabrics. Meyer’s visual language mirrors Liaigre’s eye for detail. The simple geometry that recurs throughout the house takes many forms: the sleek black line that runs along the handrail of a staircase introduces a rectilinear trend that’s echoed in the oblong patches of light filtering through the moveable screens in the dining room. The details, though, are never constant; they move and glide with the shifting daylight—a reminder that the French studio’s modernist palace is an unpredictable space. Here, little surprises linger in every corner, only to spring into view when the light is just right.
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WRITER DANA THOMAS PHOTOGRAPHER ADRIEN DIRAND
JANNIS KOUNELLIS © 2020 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK.
Alabaster pendants by architect and interior designer Joseph Dirand line the entrance hall of his new apartment, which is accoutred with a TH Robsjohn-Gibbings sofa, Folke Bensow low table, Jannis Kounellis painting, and Harumi Klossowska de Rola bronze-and-gold lioness sculpture.
In the living room, a Pierre Jeanneret sofa and chairs surround a cocktail table by Dirand. Above the mantel is art by Angel Alonso.
ANGEL ALONSO © 2020 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG © 2020 ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
A painting by Harold Ancart hangs in the living room above a Rick Owens chair. The floor lamp is by Mathieu MatĂŠgot; in the foreground is a Pierre Jeanneret bench. Facing page: A Dirand console in breccia stazzema marble and brass is topped with pieces by Robert Rauschenberg, Georges Jouve, Adrien Dirand and AndrĂŠ Borderie. The painting is by Lawrence Carroll.
A lamb sculpture by Franรงois-Xavier Lalanne stands watch in the master bedroom, decorated with an Oscar Niemeyer chair, Georges Jouve cocktail table, and Charlotte Perriand console.
HAIR AND MAKE-UP BY ISABELLE KRYLA FOR AIRPORT AGENCY.
Dirand and Anso in the kitchen— the custom banquette is by Dirand, the pendant by Eric Schmitt, and the table by Ettore Sottsass. Facing page: A breccia stazzema marble island anchors the kitchen. The chandelier is Philippe Anthonioz.
Paonazzo marble clads the bath. The bronze-and-fabric pouffe is by Eric Schmitt, and sink and tub fittings by Waterworks.
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t was probably inevitable that Joseph Dirand would go into architecture and his brother Adrien would turn to photography. The pair were sons of Jacques Dirand, one of the decor world’s pre-eminent photographers. Throughout their childhood in Paris, they’d hover over the light box, loupe to eye, and gaze at the mesmeric locales their father had captured on 35mm slides. “Venetian palaces, Palladian villas, artists’ houses, masters’ ateliers, cabinets of curiosity, princesses’ boudoirs, Tuscan castles, Napoleonic apartments, fishermen’s huts,” Adrien, who took the pictures for this story, wrote in Joseph Dirand: Interior, published by Rizzoli several years ago. “We would relive these trips with few words, passion, and a hint of mischief.” That’s also an apt way to describe Dirand’s work. He sees his approach as “ornamental minimalism”, he explains on a Friday night at his new home on the Right Bank of the Seine. “I create space with equilibrium and a classic base.” Yet “there are details and compositions”, he continues, like mixing marble powder into cement to give it a glistening silkiness, or painting mirrored closet doors with foggy, Turner-esque murals, or scorching silver-clad kitchen cabinets to evoke the smoky allure of a Belle Époque bordello. This would be the mischief. Dirand, his wife Anso, an events planner, and their two daughters (each from their previous marriages) lived for six years on the Left Bank. But with a baby on the way, they needed to upsize. They searched without much luck—even in Paris, “a noble building is hard to find”, he notes. Then their landlord mentioned a flat available in a building constructed on the Passy hill as a hotel for the Exposition Universelle of 1900. As soon as Dirand laid eyes on the 2,600-squarefoot space, with its picture-postcard view of Paris, he knew he’d found what he’d been looking for, and how he would make it his. “I’ve spent my career putting together settings for others, but rarely do I get to do it for myself,” he says. “So I was very precise about what I wanted. Design for me must always serve its function: a space well studied delivering a certain quality of life.” Clearly, stone is Dirand’s preferred material. Walls, flat surfaces, baths are all in soft-tone stone or marble—often cut from massive blocks he purchased years ago and stored, “waiting for the right moment”. As with all his commissions—which currently include a ground-up resort on Norman’s Cay in the Bahamas and interiors for the new Rosewood hotel on London’s Grosvenor Square, as
well as design-world favourites like Paris’s Loulou and Monsieur Bleu (where he met Anso, a former manager there), the Surf Club in Miami, and LeJardinier and Shun in New York—he brought on his favourite artisans, who know how to execute his “taste for details”, as he puts it. Like the three majestic Massangis limestonetrimmed arches down the left side of the entrance hall, which give way to the sprawling living-dining room. For Dirand, arches “are more a vocabulary for a house than an apartment”. Here, they create the air of “a mini-palazzo”, with edges that were handrounded by masons “to capture the light, and to create a continuous line, like a ribbon that carries on”. In the kitchen, his teenage daughter Ninon was doing her homework at a vanilla-hued island carved from a hunk of breccia stazzema marble he purchased directly from the quarry and saved for five years. “I love the thick width of the base and how the veins run down it,” he says. “You see the mass.” The WC is walled with breccia verde marble he picked up in Italy. “This material is like a landscape,” he says, surveying it. The master bath is enrobed with paonazzo marble “from the mountains above Carrara”. He even employs mineral materials for key furnishings, such as the white travertine dining table and the estremoz coffee table. Through a neoclassical limestone-pedimented doorway at the end of the entrance hall—“very 17th-century Italian”, he points out—is the family’s private quarters. In the narrow hallway prowls a sleek bronze-and-gold lioness with auric eyes—a sculpture by Harumi Klossowska de Rola, the daughter of Balthus. Throughout the home, creatures abound—an adorable Lalanne lamb, a vintage scarab table by French mid-century ceramicist Georges Jouve, a taxidermy owl from the Paris natural science shop Deyrolle. More mischief. The overall palette is “natural tints”, Dirand says, motioning towards the tobacco-hued Versailles parquet and walls and furniture in off-whites, pale greens, and the lightest of greys—a neutral canvas devised to set off his extensive modern, abstract and Arte Povera art collection. He walks to the salon’s bookcase and pulls open a hidden compartment: a turntable deck. “My wife DJs,” he says with a laugh. She also does the cooking for their frequent dinner parties. On the menu for that evening: watercress soup, osso buco, and risotto Milanese—for 12. “I work in fantasy and construct a framework for living,” he says. “And she makes it live.”
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Foll reno owing and vation a pain apa Gene , desig staking rtm Mey ner f o u e s e r-ye n r WR F t r t a f r ITER o a r a h de a nk d ar PHO & S TOG T ous Par e Bia RAP YLIST e in k Av si HER H MA AMISH Tang enu TTH IEU BOWL ier e SAL ES VA ING
Antique and vintage furnishings form a seating area at the base of the staircase in the Tangier home of Frank de Biasi and Gene Meyer.
The roof terrace was planned by up-and-coming garden designer Alexander Hoyle, and decorated with vintage wrought-iron and wicker furniture. Facing page: Portraits by Meyer hang over an armchair covered in a 1940s chintz. A 1950s lamp sits atop a George III console; the side table in front of it is Moroccan.
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Above left: English and French majolica plates form a frieze in the dining room. The painting is by Philip Taaffe; the straw animal heads (above the custom mantel) are from the local market. Above right: A Cowtan & Tout chintz covers the living room sofa and two slipper chairs. Around the room are a 1940s mirror, Moroccan tables, and a Mauretanian caneand-leather rug. Facing page: Pressed botanical specimens by Stuart Thornton and works by Moroccan artists line the entry walls. The sofa and slipper chair wear Pierre Frey fabrics; in the background are a rattan credenza and side chair.
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A pendant by de Biasi and Meyer hangs over a ground-floor sitting area. Facing page: A mix of reclaimed marble and locally made glazed and unglazed tiles patterns the floor of the kitchen, decorated with a vintage English pendant light, a Volevatch sink and fittings, custom cabinetry and curtains of a vintage Malian fabric.
A 19th-century four-poster Portuguese bed, with linens by D Porthault and Deborah Sharpe Linens, commands attention in the master bedroom. Sconces by Ann-Morris hang over 1920s French side tables, painted by Atelier Premiere. The screen on the left is Moroccan; the rug is an antique. Facing page: Hand-painted stripes define the guest bedroom, also decorated with an early 20th-century bamboo settee, a rug by Meyer, Napoleon III opaline table lamps, and art (from left) by Stuart Thornton, Gene Meyer Sr, and Meyer.
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Meyer (left) and de Biasi on the terrace.
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angier is the crossroads of so many civilizations,” says interior designer Frank de Biasi of the evocative Moroccan port city that he and his partner, the multifaceted designer Gene Meyer, have made their home. “There’s a central energy here,” he explains, “where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, where Europe meets Africa. It’s a psychic point like no other place.” De Biasi first discovered the city on a spring break in 1984: He had taken a student rail pass from Paris and just kept travelling south into the great unknown. His first impressions, however, were not promising. “It was a very dirty, very down-and-out port town,” he recalls, “rough, but exciting and exotic”; he and his travelling companions soon moved on. It wasn’t until 2001, when he was working for Peter Marino (sourcing rare and exquisite fabrics), that he rediscovered the place. His assistant Daria Prentice had invited him to visit and stay at the villa of her mother, Elena Prentice, a pillar of the city’s cultural life. Meyer couldn’t join de Biasi at the time, as he was preparing one of his menswear collections, but the two visited together the following summer, and Meyer fell in love too, with “the people, the friends, the climate, the food, the history, the exoticism that other places didn’t have”. The couple also responded to the leisurely pace and round of formal entertaining among the expatriate community and Moroccan friends that evoked their shared Southern upbringings (de Biasi is from Richmond and Meyer from Louisville, Kentucky). Soon enough, they were looking for a place of their own and were drawn to the village atmosphere of the medina in the heart of the city, engirdled by ancient fortifications and crowned by the palace of the Casbah. Many of the traditional houses here, however, have a claustrophobic lack of light, so when the couple found a dilapidated place on a little open square, with exposures on three sides, they knew they could make it their own. Their renovation took four years as they rebuilt paper-thin walls, replaced a life-threateningly vertiginous staircase with one inspired by the Old Fort Bay clubhouse in the Bahamas, and installed a light well based on one de Biasi had seen in India, and such mod cons as under-floor heating. The couple would visit the site several times a year. “Being in Tangier is like one continual house tour,” Meyer adds, “and everybody celebrates their individuality.” Meyer found himself tongue-tied at cocktail parties held by the legendary local doyenne Anna Mahmoudi, so hard was he trying to focus on memorizing her idiosyncratic tonal combinations: “Robin’segg blue, pale sage green, tomato-soupy-coral, and a lot of black and dark green”, he rhapsodizes. “The way that the colours hit each other and they’re put together—I was just losing my mind!” Eventually, inventive inspirations from the homes of fellow Tangerine aesthetes Yves Saint Laurent, antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs, botanist and writer Umberto Pasti, and Mickey Raymond (who once worked for
Colefax and Fowler), all found their way into the home where the couple pooled their respective skill sets. “For Gene, colour comes first,” de Biasi explains. “For me, layout and function and livability come first.” De Biasi transformed the light-filled top floor into a summer drawing room, with a tucked-away kitchen, while the ground floor became a cosy winter sitting room, with master and guest bedrooms in between. They originally painted the rooms a neutral broken white before Meyer added his colours. Upstairs, the couple wanted to recreate the pink living room that was the heart of a fancifully decorated 1940s cottage they once owned in Miami. A yellow ceiling cools the reflected light from the whitewashed walls of the neighbouring homes. A Cowtan & Tout rosepatterned chintz sets the tone for the decoration here, which was completed when the couple unpacked a harlequin set of majolica plates and decided to hang them against a painted frieze of deep spearmint green. Downstairs, the 1940s floral glazed chintz covering a chair suggested vivid colour scheme. True to the Tangier spirit, the furnishing is just as eclectic: colonial Portuguese rosewood furniture for the master bedroom; Scottish Regency chairs for the dining area; and 1940s boudoir chairs in the sitting room, for which de Biasi also bought hundreds of the pressedflower works made by Stuart Thornton, painstakingly hung by the couple’s suitably perfectionist majordomo, Hicham El Hassani. When the house was finished, the lease on the couple’s Park Avenue apartment came up, and they asked themselves why they needed to renew it. “My business is international,” reasons de Biasi, who is currently working on projects in New York City, Palm Beach, London, and Tangier itself, including a fanciful scheme for the storied American Legation, which had been gifted to the United States in 1821 by Sultan Moulay Suleiman. “To be based here is just so much easier. Life is led at a more measured pace.” As they both explain, however, it is the skilled local artisans who have made their project a joy—weavers, metalworkers and woodworkers among them. “You can design anything,” says Meyer, “and someone is willing to make it,” although he concedes that there is a great deal of trial and error. De Biasi explains, “You just have to be patient. There’s a lot of hand-holding, but it’s amazing how quickly it all kind of works out.” Because they had sacrificed the idea of a house with a garden for the ease of living in the centre of town, de Biasi and Meyer enlisted the help of their greenthumbed friend Alexander Hoyle to create a Henri Rousseau roofscape instead. This verdant place now affords views of the medina, the sweeping corniche, and the endless white city beyond. “We built this house as a place to end up,” says Meyer, surveying this enchanted domain, “but now we are just in heaven. We didn’t look back, and it’s so exciting that I pinch myself constantly.”
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AT THE LAUNCH OF THE GREENLAM NEW COLLECTION 2020-22 EARLY THIS YEAR IN BENGALURU, THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN COMMUNITY GOT TOGETHER FOR A FUN EVENING OF DRINKS, DINNER AND NEW INTERIOR TRENDS.
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BIKRAMJIT BOSE
Gear up for the biggest virtual beauty bash
Calling all beauty lovers! Your one-stop shop for all things beauty— Vogue Beauty Festival 2020—is here. Spotlighting the best in haircare, makeup, skincare and fragrance, Vogue’s two-day virtual affair has a host of activities in store, all of which celebrate the exciting world of beauty.
WHEN: AUGUST 29TH AND 30TH, 2020 WHERE: vogue.in/beauty-festival-2020 For more information, log on to @vogueindia on Instagram For partnership queries: sales@condenast.in
STYLE NOTES
FROM THE HOTTEST PRODUCTS TO THE COOLEST LAUNCHES, HERE’S THE LOW-DOWN ON THE LATEST IN THE MARKET THIS SEASON
SOAK IT IN From Happy D, Duravit’s classic bathroom line, comes a new, refined and reimagined series of sanitaryware, the Happy D.2 Plus. Developed by sieger design for Duravit, this latest edition features a selection of 11 finishes that can be mixed and matched for a personalized look. Meanwhile, a striking two-tone contrast using new colour variants (Glossy White on the inside, and Anthracite Matt on the exterior) defines its notable units like the bathtub (pictured) and the worktop basin—a contemporary version of the 1999 signature washbasin design. (duravit.in)
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HERITAGE HOROLOGY Audemars Piguet reinterprets its 1940s chronograph wristwatch for the modern era with the limited-edition ‘[Re]master01’ (pictured). The self-winding timepiece evokes the distinctive design of the original—a twotone steel and pink-gold case, a gold-toned dial, a blue second hand, and art deco-inspired numerals. Meanwhile, advances in horological technology afford the wristwatch a glare-proof sapphire crystal caseback, water resistance and improved legibility. A handstitched light-brown calfskin strap adds a final touch of elegance. (audemarspiguet.com)
GLASS ACT The Cattelan Italia novelties for the year speak of emotion, creative commitment, and a desire to defy limits. It’s why the monolithic textures seen in the New Keramik 2020 collection of tables, sideboards and consoles are sensuous like never before, and why ‘CrystalArt CY02’ uses extra-clear glass tops to showcase the surfaces’ earthy tones. In the ‘Skorpio CrystalArt CY02’ table (pictured), warm hues flirt with amber nuances in a sophisticated product offering which, like the other pieces from the brand’s latest collection, seems designed to make you fall in love. (cattelanitalia.com)
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FLORA FANTASTIC D’Decor gives its exquisitely embroidered solid and sheer curtain fabrics a timeless appeal through two stately collections— Senorita and Floriana. Senorita is marked by its flair for drama, sporting everything from printed velvets dusted with foil finishes, to matt sequin embellishments and luxe satin bases—all in a glamorous palette of burnished metallics. Floriana, on the other hand, with its English-countrygarden aesthetic, botanical motifs and floral hues is bound to brighten up your space, and your day. (ddecor.com)
ANTIQUE APPEARANCE The desk takes on countless forms and functions throughout Theodore Alexander’s comprehensive portfolio, each recalling either traditional or modern themes. Widely recognized for its antique reproductions, the luxury furniture brand highlights its Louis XV-style, cabriole-legged writing desks ‘A Royal Memoir’ and ‘Estate Bureau Plat’. The oakveneered ‘Legacy Writing Desk’ (pictured) from the Steve Leung collection, on the other hand, stands on two pairs of solid-brushed beech legs—a symbol of its creator’s passion for contemporary sophistication. (theodorealexander.com)
MODERN RECKONING Fanzart’s expansive Modern collection of fans offers an impressive number of variations in colours, materials, finishes, and blade types. This includes the remote-controlled ‘Divine Coffee’ (pictured) that, like several others in the collection, is fitted with mood lighting and energy-saving mechanics. Not to mention the ceiling fan’s unique bidirectional-rotation ‘Summer-Winter’ feature that helps cool rooms in the summer, and warm them in the winter, making it a fan for all seasons. (fanzartfans.com)
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CLEAN SLATE Somany Ceramics, a brand that has been synonymous with wall and floor tiles for almost half a century, has innovation at its core. Its most recent breakthrough— Germ Shield Technology for its patented Veil Craft Shield tiles—was created, perhaps, to respond to the need for higher hygiene standards. The 600-by600-millimetre and 600-by-1200millimetre glazed surface tiles are manufactured with a special nano chemical coating that protects against germs, bacteria, fungus and other microbes. It could very well be the one tile that saves us all. (somanyceramics.com)
GOLDEN LINING Czech lighting giant Sans Souci takes a cue from nature and fantasy to create the ‘Contour’ hanging light (pictured). Its base component is a metallurgical marvel—a golden-edged ‘glass leaf’—that is the core of its elaborate illusion, the secret to which lies in the reflections. All the while, subtle but enchanting crystal hues like opal, amber and cobalt play hide and seek in this optical decor’s gilded shimmering arrangement, put together by designer Klara Mikesova. (ss-gd.com)
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STOCKISTS
The merchandise featured in the magazine has been sourced from the following stores. Some shops may carry a selection only. Prices and availability were checked at the time of going to press, but we cannot guarantee that prices will not change or that specific items will be in stock when the magazine is published. ARJUN RATHI: MUMBAI 09324138109 (ARJUNRATHI.COM) ARKETIPO FIRENZE: ITALY 0039055-8876248 (ARKETIPO.COM); AT AND MORE STORIES: MUMBAI 09821040007 (ANDMORESTORIES.COM); AT LIVING ART INTERIORS: BENGALURU 09481112340 (LIVINGARTINTERIORS.IN) ATMOSPHERE: INDIA 09980599805 (ATMOSPHEREDIRECT.COM) BARO: MUMBAI 09004981728 (BARO-INDIA.COM) BAXTER: ITALY 0039031-35999 (BAXTER.IT); AT SOURCES UNLIMITED: MUMBAI 022-62101700; NEW DELHI 08510098000 (SOURCESUNLIMITED.CO.IN) BOCONCEPT: MUMBAI 022-
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49731531; NEW DELHI 01141663554 (BOCONCEPT.COM) BOHINC STUDIO: UK 0044-02032877979 (BOHINCSTUDIO.COM) BONALDO: ITALY 0039-0499299011 (BONALDO.COM); AT GRANDEUR INTERIORS: INDIA 09810013342, 09810552726 (GRANDEURINTERIORS.COM) CASSINA: MUMBAI 022-22614848; NEW DELHI 011-40817357 (CASSINA.COM) CC-TAPIS: ITALY 0039-0289093884 (CC-TAPIS.COM); AT SOURCES UNLIMITED: MUMBAI 022-62101700; NEW DELHI 08510098000 (SOURCESUNLIMITED.CO.IN) CECCOTTI COLLEZIONI: ITALY 0039-050-8067550 (CECCOTTICOLLEZIONI.IT); SEE POLTRONA FRAU GROUP INDIA D’DECOR: INDIA 1800-267-9008 (DDECOR.COM) DEFURN: INDIA 09821928432 (DEFURN.CO.IN) ETRO HOME INTERIORS: ITALY 0039-031-70757 (ETRO.COM); AT SEETU KOHLI HOME: NEW DELHI 09999966702 (SEETUKOHLIHOME.COM)
FLEXFORM: ITALY 00390362-3991 (FLEXFORM.IT); AT VITA MODERNA: MUMBAI 022-61270011; AT LIVING ART INTERIORS: BENGALURU 09481112340 (LIVINGARTINTERIORS.IN) GIANFRANCO FERRÉ HOME: ITALY 0039-02-801384 (GIANFRANCOFERREHOME.IT); AT SEETU KOHLI HOME: NEW DELHI 09999966702 (SEETUKOHLIHOME.COM) GOOD EARTH: INDIA 09582999555 (GOODEARTH.IN) GULMOHARLANE.COM: JAIPUR 08824040096 HANDS: MUMBAI 09820494680; NEW DELHI 09313341775 (HANDSCARPETS.COM) HATSU: INDIA 09820067671 (HATSU.IN) HAVILAND: PARIS 0033-(0)14006910 (HAVILAND.FR); AT EMERY STUDIO: NEW DELHI 09810081810 HOF: AHMEDABAD 09904302516; NEW DELHI 09904302504 (HOFINDIA.COM) IQRUP+RITZ: INDIA 09599110672 (IQRUPANDRITZ.COM)
JAIPUR RUGS: INDIA 07230038884 (JAIPURRUGS.COM) KREOO: ITALY 0039-0444-688311 (KREOO.COM); AT C BHOGILAL WEST-END: MUMBAI 02261523100 (CBWESTEND.COM) LEMA: ITALY 0039-03-1630990 (LEMAMOBILI.COM); AT SPAZIO: MUMBAI 02224944400; PUNE 020-66473131 (SPAZIOLIVING.COM); AT AMBER HOME INTERIOR: BENGALURU 09740696666 (AHIPL.IN) MAHENDRA DOSHI: MUMBAI 022-23630526 (MAHENDRADOSHI.COM) MINOTTI: ITALY 0039-0362343499 (MINOTTI.COM); AT DESIGN ITALIANO: AHMEDABAD 09879026328 (DESIGNITALIANO.IN) MOORTHY’S: MUMBAI 02223512876 (MOORTHYS.COM) MUUTO: DENMARK 004532969899 (MUUTO.COM); AT ANGEL VENTURES: MUMBAI 02222019414 (ANGEL-VENTURES.IN) PHANTOM HANDS: INDIA 07760329900
(PHANTOMHANDS.IN); AT LE MILL: MUMBAI 02222041925 (LEMILL.COM) PHILLIPS ANTIQUES: MUMBAI 022-22020564 (PHILLIPSANTIQUES.COM) POLTRONA FRAU GROUP INDIA: MUMBAI 022-22614848 (POLTRONAFRAU.COM) POORANAWALLA: MUMBAI 022-23511437 (POORANAWALLA.COM) PORRO: MILAN 0039-031783266 (PORRO.COM); AT FURNITECH: MUMBAI 022-49721148 PRECIOSA: INDIA 07045145575 (PRECIOSALIGHTING.COM) QAALEEN: INDIA 09540988999 (QAALEEN.CO.IN) RED, BLUE & YELLOW: MUMBAI 022-66260400 (REDBLUEYELLOW.IN) ROCHE BOBOIS: MUMBAI 022-49237772; NEW DELHI 011-41407772 (ROCHE-BOBOIS.COM) ROSENTHAL: GERMANY 0049-0-9287720 (ROSENTHAL. DE); AT THOMAS GOODE & CO: UK 0044-20-74992823; MUMBAI 022-66325757
(THOMASGOODE.COM) RUBBERBAND: INDIA 09920939342 (RUBBERBANDPRODUCTS.COM) SARITA HANDA: MUMBAI 022-40052686; NEW DELHI 09555733344 (SARITAHANDA.COM) SCRIPT BY GODREJ: INDIA 1800266-1661 (SCRIPTONLINE.COM) TAHERALLY’S: MUMBAI 022-23471169 (TAHERALLYS.IN) THE ANTIQUE STORY: INDIA 09606371111 (THEANTIQUESTORY.COM) THE GREAT EASTERN HOME: MUMBAI 022-23770079 (THEGREATEASTERNHOME.COM) TURRI: 0039-031-760111 (TURRI.IT); AT SOURCES UNLIMITED: MUMBAI 022-62101700; NEW DELHI 08510098000 (SOURCESUNLIMITED.CO.IN) VISIONNAIRE: ITALY 0039-051-6186322 (VISIONNAIRE-HOME.COM) YASANCHE: MUMBAI 09769770004 (YASANCHE.COM)
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THE FOUNDER OF BROWNPAPERBAG CURATES AND PHOTOGRAPHS A SELECTION OF OBJECTS THAT BRING HER COMFORT, FROM THE RARE TO THE MUNDANE “This is a really good edition of n+1—[a literary magazine] that I highly recommend.”
“I picked up this bronze Nandi on impulse at Phillips Antiques and kept it in my kitchen for over a year.”
“The first Indian edition of The Trachtenberg Speed System Of Basic Mathematics, published in 1962. Its logic is comforting in these deeply weird times. Plus, it smells like my college library.”
“This Simone fabric is also the upholstery for my sofa.”
“This gorgeous LP is from an exhibit at the Rubin Museum in New York; it was a gift from an excurator, one of my favourite people.”
“Vintage cigarette cases, found on my travels, and my HMT watch.”
“A housewarming present from—and by—the lovely photographerstylist duo Porus Vimadalal and Prayag Menon.”
“A Bandit Queen pillow with a secret compartment—for whatever you might need in the middle of the night. The embroidered eye mask is from & Other Stories. I’m hoping they’ll make a matching face mask soon.”
“A postcard from the Copper House in Alibag—it’s the loveliest vacation home.”
“Molotov’s Magic Lantern by Rachel Polonsky and The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa— almost as good as being in Moscow or Sicily. Sandwiched between them is How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen.”
“A poster published in the first issue of the new bpb newsletter— designed by architect Ashiesh Shah, in collaboration with graphic designer Shweta Malhotra.”
“The perfect bathing suit for when pools open again. Don’t @ me.”
“A necklace from Dylanlex, one of my favourite jewellery designers in New York. I wear it over my pyjamas sometimes.”
“Tabasco ‘Bloody Mary Mix’—add your poison of choice, a spoonful of olive brine and lots of ice. You can thank me later.”
“Boots bought on a frigid February morning in London—I almost missed my flight for these. They ended up being from Karl Lagerfield’s last collection for Chanel.”
“To keep under my pillow until we can travel again. Bon voyage!” ‘COPPER HOUSE’ PHOTO: ENRICO CANO.