Azure Tales by Achyutam Designs

A cozy millennial home shaped with proportions, geometry and colour blue.

A home is the inhabitant’s dream, cultivated through years of aspiration and hard work hence the role of the designer is laden with the responsibility of fulfilling that vision. For ‘Azure Tales’, the precise brief by the clients, a nuclear family of three, was to realise a home that is easy to maintain, minimalistic, modern and splashed with the colour blue. For Shikha and Ashish Parmar of Achytuam Designs, who believe in delivering the client’s vision, the use of the cool eye-catching colour was a new challenge that they skillfully mould and amplify with their own rooted understanding of space making.

The result is this meticulously detailed home, built with blue accents. However, while taking the personality of its inhabitants, this home is also a spatial narration of the studio’s vocabulary that is strongly grounded in geometry and proportions expressed through a balance of mass, material, and textures. Located in one of the few high-rises in Ahmedabad’s upcoming area Bopal, this 1500 sq.ft residence is on the 19th floor. Initially, a four-bedroom space was later converted to a luxurious three-bedroom apartment with an expansive living room, a dining area, a kitchen and bedrooms- for the child, occasional guests and the client. Keeping in mind the changing requirements of the millennial generation, the detailed designs transform to accommodate the dynamics, incrementally growing with the inhabitants.

The entrance opens into the living space that exhibits splashes of blue in different elements balanced by lines of black metal and masses of warm wood. The designers incorporate the complete material palette in minute fragments across the residence, including the set of main doors. Adorning a perforated jali is a Tetris pattern made in metal, which occupies three-fourths of a circle on the front door; the eye to the home is a cryptic summary of the space ahead. On the inside, the circle is completed by a cabinet panelled in wood, which conceals electrical services while visually exhibiting the remaining one-third of the circle stimulated through grooved lines. The play of textures and material is further layered with a button-like handle in the hero shade.

Guiding the entrance into the living is the breakfast counter on one side and a wall-mounted console, on the other, sitting on a linear exposed brick wall. Honouring the true textures of the natural materials, the brick wall, an distinct backdrop to all the activities in the living room, is a linear element broken down in proportion through blue pigmented bricks laid in Stretcher bond courses, creating an illusion of a heightened room, thanks to its horizontality. The length is further broken by a royal blue arch door frame that protrudes from the linear mass, becoming a subtle motif for the house. Penetrating to product level details, the handles on the door are customised in the standard arch motif with a grid mesh that integrates a standard locking system with it.

Sitting affront the blue wall is a contrasting L-shaped couch in blush besides a lone chair in beige that balances the colour palette. Complementing the space while being a material representation of the house, the tripartite coffee tables have elements in oak wood, one in black metal and one in a nano white circular top. All the furniture pieces are raised on slender legs, ensuring additional visibility of the seamless Jaisalmeri Stone flooring in exquisite ocher, making the spatial setting light and airy. A porous TV unit sits opposite the couch, which features boxed wooden elements, storing set-top boxes and planters supported on slender metal rods. This module of the hollow cylindrical planter is customised and features across the house, adding splashes of life in green. Incidentally, the openings of the apartment are oriented on the south, bringing in influx of natural light that complement the layered use of blue, in assorted tints and textures.

Honouring the colour theme, the breakfast counter by the entrance, along a grey wall, is finished with textured ceramic tiles and supports a nano-white countertop. The stem of the table conceals storage shutters hidden behind the ceramic tile with vertical textures and brick patterns in blue. Framing the views of the kitchen from one end and that of the entrance on the other, is a sleek wooden frame suspended from the beam over the furniture, fitted with a hanging light in the centre. A pair of butterfly bar chairs by Studio Works, customised in a blue threaded seat, complete the set-up. On the inside, the kitchen is a blue haven, spruced with the azure hue taking over the shutters and the inbuilt fridge cabinet.

Balancing the blueness of the home, the dining is a spatial poetry in white. The centrally placed Japanese-style dining table is a work of art that embeds burnt wooden sections in white resin, penetrating the cracks of the wooden veins to create a stunning one-of-a-kind piece. Low-heightened butterfly chairs balance the contrast of black and white in off-white threads. A modern chandelier, made possible due to the reduced height of the furniture, is suspended in the centre of the space, adding opulence and understated luxury. The neutrality of the space is balanced by a customised art piece mounted on the adjacent wall, showcasing a play of jute threads in red and yellow, adding the required pop.

The master bedroom is an elaborate linear space made by conjoining two compact bedrooms. The large space highlights the play of geometry that has precedence in the living spaces, like the grooved circular motif on the main wooden door reappearing in the headboard and footboard of the bed. A blue PU finished wall becomes the bed-back, intricately scaled through horizontal and vertical grooves which adds a visual height to the space while subtly breaking down the solid monochromatic mass. This is further made playful with splashes of orange introduced through a life-size abstract art piece in grey and orange and a pair of curtains in the latter. Facing the bed is a transformable study table which descends from the wall to facilitate working from home while not occupying a permanent place in the bedroom, ensuring a balance between work and life.

This room observes a series of wardrobes with shutters by sandwiching a white fabric, featuring blue floral embroidery, between glass panels in a wooden frame, complete with a handle. An alternate application of these shutters visually balances out a solid wooden shutter between them. An additional section of the room is dedicated to a walk-in wardrobe with a large mirrored door. The space is an assembly of modular shelves with adjustable height that brings flexibility for future use. Similarly, an angular track runs along the room and inside the dressing space, allowing the inhabitants to add and move spotlight modules as per their liking.

Every room in this blue-toned home is bathed in captivating details to accommodate all the functionality without compromising the aesthetics. The young toddler’s room is a cosy space, with a collapsible bed that folds and tucks inside a niche by the wall to open up the floor for play. A wooden standing counter, detailed with open and closed storage spaces, houses her belongings. The corner transcends in a unique window, panelled in a D-shaped opening, jutting out of the surface to form a niche. The white porous mass is layered with a blue pleated curtain that falls along with a lounge seating that is a perfect spot to curl up with a book or gaze outside.

Likewise, the guest room is a spacious enclosure with a simple grey bed back sitting behind a patterned headboard in white that adorns blue-hued geometric motifs, all detailed with grooves.The bed is finished in the walnut veneer, like the rest of the house, along with the wardrobe shutters where the extreme corners exhibit the wooden finish. At the same time, the one in the centre takes the geometric language in the primary colour of the residence.

With this home, which hosts detail-oriented design in every pore and corner, Achyutam Designs narrate a spatial story of balance. The juxtaposed balance of a cool blue with a warm flooring and walnut veneer, a complementary balance of line, mass and geometry, a contradictory balance of rawness and luxury and the perfect balance of the client’s aspirations and the architect’s vision.