What could prompt a homeowner to renovate his home for the first time since the 1980s? Probably the same thing that would get interior designer Kohelika Kohli to specifically design an innovative lighting solution to best showcase it. Art.
It's always considered to be the thing that really adds that final artistic touch to the house, the last thing to go up on the wall, or adorning a counter. But what if art is the design? The be all and end all of the project? Well, then for the architect who knows his diptychs from his watercolour and charcoal paintings from drawings, it becomes a rubbing-of-hands-together, barely-held-back glee.
Art as the driving force for designing homes really came into its own with architects and interior designers who used amazing collections to design memorable spaces. For Rajiv Saini, when he was approached to work on a south Mumbai apartment, it was the homeowners' massive collection of art that did it. “What made it exciting—the reason why my artist friends had called me and told me about the project—was that the homeowner had been collecting art for many years. For me that was something exciting to look forward to.” While art was clearly the sun around which the design revolved for several homes, there were others too, where art became a symbolic expression. Like Dipen Gada's ‘Nirant' in Vadodara. The architect created sculptures in different poses of relaxation around the house to sync with the overarching idea of his retreat—a pad for kicking back and relaxing. And a studio and residence for an artist couple literally became a blank canvas for inspiration, looking like a piece of modernist art itself. Innovative, much? Take a gander at these images and decide for yourself.
