The Bali Residence | The Design Chapel | Mumbai
Designed for a young couple Mr Vivek and Mrs Aditi Bali, The Bali Residence is a minimalistic apartment that combines their Mumbai lifestyle with Eastern European aesthetics.
For Preshita Shah Gupta, the principal designer of The Design Chapel studio this project has been a great exercise in establishing a strong clear design concept and then following it through to create pertinent spatial aesthetics. When the clients approached The Design Chapel for the complete over haul of their newly bought 2BHK residence, a conceptual and a contextual design process was explored where every decision gets governed by a robust underlying design language. The clients being fans of the school of Modernism and having travelled to Northern and Eastern Europe were great admirers of the Scandinavian Aesthetic. We therefore decided to bring Norway to their doorstep. Our intention was not to confer to trends but to create a design that can be germane for the space and can be timeless.
Scandinavian aesthetics are defined by simplicity of form and importance to functionality with a clean, bold, fuss free design semantic. The focus was to make this space a haven for the well-travelled couple’s spontaneous lifestyle, with friends dropping in for cocktails, easy, lazy weekends or quiet evenings. Our idea was to make the tight spaces in the 2BHK look spacious and open by employing a uniform color palette which envelopes the entire house. This made the house into a calming sanctuary where occupants feel relaxed and at ease.
The color palette associated with the Scandinavian style includes hues of white, greys, browns and blacks. Grey flooring runs throughout the house tying the whole space together. Pops of colors have been added with mustard yellow and sea green in the soft furnishings while teal blue is the highlight color which appears in the wallpaper and the 3 seater sofa with the pouffe in the living cum dining space. A beautiful hand crafted teak wood dining table with its grains polished to perfection was designed and made on site with dining chairs made specifically to suit the client’s ergonomic requirements. The teal wallpaper has also been designed and custom printed for the dining space wall. Our effort was to make the design detail oriented.
The neutral palette that is used throughout the house keeps the interiors subtle and tasteful. Materials like pine and birch wood, pale colours like white, teal and grey used in curtains and artwork with lean, leggy furniture makes the room look expansive.
We made the decision to keep all 3 functional spaces, the kitchen and the 2 washrooms purely black and white, making us take the idea of monochrome living to its fullest. These are bold spaces with black and white subway tiles, black granite counters and glossy finishes taking one straight to an east European residential impression. The ample use of mirrors reflects the small space creating an illusion of largeness which was very much required here.
The element of light was very important to us and we allowed ample amount of light to flow through and reflect. Artificial lighting has been integrated using modern elements like geometric pendant lamps and free standing dome lights.
Scandinavian aesthetics does not include a lot of patterns except a few geometrical ones and encourages lack of fuss and open, clean designed interiors which one will not grow tired of. Following the mantra of ‘Less is More’ we managed to make the space look less cluttered and more visually relaxing. This residence is full of small cozy corners to curl up with a cup of coffee on rainy evenings and spaces where one can de-stress, watch Netflix and chill after a long day at work.
Our thought process while designing was extremely simple but we strived to create a profound experience with this house as we truly believe that we humans need to demand the best from all our living environments.
FACT FILE :
Project Name – The Bali Residence
Design Studio – The Design Chapel
Principal Designer – Preshita Shah Gupta
Client’s Name – Mr. Vivek and Mrs. Aditi Bali
Design Team – Preshita Shah Gupta, Kajal Kamath and Dhvani Parekh
Location – Mumbai, India
Carpet Area – 800 sq. ft.
Project Year – January 2019
Photography Credits – Biju Gopal , Bizou Photos
Text – Preshita Shah Gupta
