Pearls on their walls

Abhilasha Ojha comes away mesmerised by a house in Lutyens’ Delhi that has been designed by interior brand Alchemy.

How does one go about making changes to a house that belongs to one of the most exclusive and grandest parts of New Delhi? That’s the question that pops into our minds as we enter what can safely be called a slice of Delhi’s architectural history.

We have been extended a warm welcome by Anupama Dalmia and Nupur Gupta, promoters of Alchemy, a Delhi-based furniture and interior design studio. The duo designed this house within a year; quite a feat if you look at the number of changes it has undergone. Sprawled over 1.5 acres of land, this house, one of Alchemy’s most challenging projects, has two crucial elements — greenery and natural sunlight. Both are present in abundance here.

“Bringing the outside inside is what we wanted to do,” explains Dalmia, as she ushers me into the five-bedroom house complete with living and dining areas. We cross the porch and the main lobby area, seating ourselves in the formal living room that boasts of textured walls and carefully selected handcrafted pieces. Windows rise from the ground level, ushering in plenty of sunlight. One enjoys the attention to detail that is evident everywhere, including in the solid wood centre table which is exquisitely handcrafted. On the table, we find a couple of impeccably carved conches. “The light fixtures, furniture, everything has been customised,” mentions Dalmia, while I continue to soak in the greenery and natural light coming through from the large windows, along with some rich coffee. It’s not just the design of the house that is a winner but also the way unique pieces, collected from all over the world by the owners, have been displayed.

Though the interiors look picture perfect — complete as they are also with works by some of the biggest names in the world of art hanging from the walls — they weren’t easy to design. “By law, we couldn’t break down the exterior. So, we had to work under some constraint, for sure,” Gupta chips in. What this meant was finding the means and ways to provide optimum utilisation of space. The duo, along with an architect, decided to first check the areas where walls could be broken. Once that was achieved, Dalmia explains, the house needed to “show off its ample greenery”. Adds Gupta, “Another important element was to ensure continuity in the look.” In the living room where we are seated, for instance, there’s a wall done in exquisite mother-of-pearl inlay patterns. It’s a running theme that continues into the next room too — the dining area. The designers explain that even the marble flooring in white hasn’t been given a break and runs through the house.

Not surprisingly, the philosophy of Alchemy breathes in every nook and corner of this house. “We believe that a home should feel and look eclectic. It’s great to be contemporary but it’s critical that Indian craftsmanship is encouraged in a huge way,” explains Dalmia. By that yardstick, the home that we tour fits in with the design aesthetics that the duo ascribe to. “This home is very contemporary but it has an Indian soul,” encapsulates Dalmia, who admits to having thoroughly enjoyed the process of designing this house.

Besides the challenge of working within the constraints of time and a largely unalterable structure, the designers also had to create a space where two separate houses in the same complex seamlessly blended into each other without the privacy of any of the inhabitants getting compromised. A house for a joint family, with as many as 10 residents, the house had to convey warmth and a distinct character, and have interiors that were harmonious yet functional, practical and comfortable.

An interesting element in the house is a traditional courtyard, a large part of which was merged into other areas to create more room as required by the owners. “It’s a pity that the traditional courtyard had to be largely done away with, but that was vital,” says Dalmia. However, the designers decided to keep a portion of it intact. Resting in the centre of the house is a small portion of the courtyard that has been encased in glass and surrounded with green plants and flowering shrubs.

What the designers have also done to make the house unique is to have various living room options. While there’s a formal living room area, there are other spaces which, Dalmia explains, are perfect to entertain guests in. Interestingly, while the rest of the house has “a character that is continuous in nature”, the bathrooms are distinctly different from one another. A regular basin area near the dining hall, for instance, has a mother-of-pearl inlay sink set against a bronze-coloured wall to make for a striking look. Then, there’s another washroom area which has a “flower-patterned wall” in ecru with tiny Swarovski crystals to accentuate the wall. The bathroom adjoining the guest room gets another tone altogether with the placement of large ceramic planters and glass structures to break the monotony of regular walls.

Dalmia points out another design mantra: “For us, fixed elements like the ceilings and the walls, usually referred to as the negative spaces, are very critical. In fact, the walls usually dictate the design of the pieces and their placements.” Not surprisingly, even the house that we tour has different elements to highlight the walls. In the dining area, for instance, a wooden structure with delicate filigree work stands in place of a regular wall. Similarly, in another section with an informal seating area, a wooden panel with lotus motifs is the eyecatching element. There are textured walls, and those with wallpaper. But our favourite pick is a wall on the first floor of the house: Doing away with regular paint or wallpaper, our designer duo collaged hundreds of black-and-white family photographs and placed these as a running theme on the entire wall. It’s personal, effective and magical.

Though the home has a luxurious look to it, it does not drip labels! “It’s not a home that’s brand conscious. Everything from the furniture to the light fixtures has been customised,” says Dalmia, pointing to handcrafted tiles that the family had picked up from Bangkok and which were placed in one section of the balcony. Moreover, the designers have retained most of the old furniture and given it a facelift by sprucing it up effectively and placing it in different sections of the home.

That personal touch is what gives this place an edge. No wonder it’s a winner all the way.