UI-UX designer Neha Lodha had a vision: to transform her Prabhadevi apartment into a home for entertaining, working from home, art and design, food, music, and travel. All that, in a footprint of 800 square feet, mind you. As for architect Rochelle Santimano of Goa-based Studio Praia’s rationale, it was simple: maximising function meant minimising everything else, including the walls, ceilings and windows, which she stripped down to their bones. This also included creating space in unique ways, one of which was adding a seating ledge to the large bay window of the living room. This transforms the window into a serene nook, and also increases the seating capacity of the home when entertaining guests.
Original text by Vaishnavi Nayel Talawadekar, edited for context.
Embrace Curves
Shaped for a couple who welcomed their newborn and their first owned apartment around the same time, this 1,100-square-foot home in Pune is conceived along three guiding principles: safety, softness, and simplicity. The IT engineer–artist duo, coming from varied professional backgrounds, sought a design team that could synthesise their pragmatic approach within a fixed budget, and turned to Prathamesh Kubal and Tanvi Dubbewar of Studio Aatman. “The requirements were clear and deeply practical. The clients wanted everything in the house to have a defined place, extending even to commonly overlooked utility items such as brooms and cleaning tools. Despite this strong emphasis on storage, the home was not to feel cluttered or visually heavy,” share the designers. The living space is envisioned to feel open yet composed. Built-in storage, crafted in light oak, offers generous capacity without visually overwhelming the room. Curved furniture edges and rounded detailing on the corners of the walls also revealed more storage options in the form of shelves.
Original text by Aishwarya Khurana, edited for context.