Surface Attraction

This Chennai home is a lesson in open - plan living.

What happens when an artist marries an architect? You get a home where every detail is a masterpiece that speaks of the symphony of cultures and beings, redolent with colours, textures and accents. Such is the story of Nikunj Villa - the Chennai home of Radha and Deepak Sehgal. Spread over a lavish 8,000 square feet, this suburban mansion reflects the aesthetics of its owners. Radha is an artist who also dabbles in textile design, while Deepaks architectural practise specialises in open plan living. So, when the newly married couple decided to set up house, their joint skills complemented each other perfectly. Deepak started by knocking down all non - structural partition walls in what was a disused office space in the leafv outskirts of Chennai. "I wanted to allow the natural sunlight to penetrate into the innermost rooms," he explains. The alteration had an added advantage - a sense of openness and intimacy, where husband and wife could be within each others ambit even while going on with their individual lives.

However, even open - plan living requires spatial demarcations to avoid a sense of chaos. And this is where Radha came to the forte, with her skillful play on colours and textures. Walls were clad in bold, earthy hues, whose edges subtly defined the boundaries of various rooms, while each space got its signature texture - from unfinished slate tiles to rustic stone slabs and poured concrete floors, the sense of tactility is both functional and aesthetic. To this mix, the artist added her own paintings and beautiful rice fabric wall papers sourced during a trip to Japan, thereby endowing the spaces with a personal and emotional tangibility. "Tts important for every home to have a personality that is borne out of the owners own collections... thats what transforms a house into a home," she elucidates.
The couples favourite area is the bedroom, which is replete with sunbeams during the day and a carefully crafted palette of mood lighting as the evening takes over. "This is where we retreat to at the end of a tough day - its our private haven," says Radha, with a twinkle in her eyes. And we can see why!