Unbounded Abode

I'm Apeksha Naik,an Principal Architect at Hiraya Design Studio - based out of Mangalore,India and this project is special to me as its my personal home and working on it was my husband’s and my labour of love. We’re 4 years into our marriage and when we decided to start a journey of living on our own in our personal space, a 2400 Sqft light filled 3 bedroom apartment,all we aimed to make it was an unbounded,calm,comfortable abode. We look at our home being a space designed exclusively for 2 of us on a day to day basis and on weekends to host friends and family at the blink of an eye and thus one of the 3 rooms were repurposed into a private lounge which is connected to both the living room as well as the primary bedroom through a sliding folding door that can be opened to make the entire apartment open up into almost one entity.

My husband Vickyath likes all things glass,glossy futuristic ; basically modern and me on the other hand am a fanatic of all things rustic,earthy and subtle.The debate was as to whose style of design do we pick up to develop the concept of our home but my subconscious mind started to visualize a design that both of us absolutely love equally. And so we worked on a concept that has a balance of what both of us like in terms of design. Our design approach combines elements of modern and rustic aesthetics. For example,on our main door,we have a combination of glossy black acrylic and grey matte duco painted surface and bordered with antique wooden trims and a carved horizontal panel that are finished in a modern way. Our design also speaks a lot about sustainability and functionality to craft a space that is both visually striking and highly functional. The final design is tailored to create a unique, personalized space for us. The ‘flexibility & openness’ that our home has in terms of layout and fusion of design is why we call our home our ‘Unbounded abode’ and we hoped that the outcome did full justice to it.

Unlike how a basic expected result and material to be procured is decided on during the concept stage in any other project, we worked differently on this one.We did our sourcing trip first where we studied the market and explored all our available options in terms of most recent additions to it,shortlisted the style of furniture,lighting,decor,electrical fittings and basic vibe in terms of soft and hard furnishings we were going in for and then incorporated it in our design as we felt that if we do not go about this way,we would end up using materials already in our radar that we have seen and used before.