This is a home tour of Mumbai-based architect & interior designer Mahek Lalan’s (of SML Architects) 2-bedroom family home. It’s not often you get to see how the architects’ design a home for themselves paring down the frills and superfluous artifacts.
This home is particularly breathtaking as it gave me a beach-home vibe when I first looked at it for its offbeat usage of birch ply. Indian interiors are characteristic of dark wood stains being dominated by rose wood and teak wood for years. The freshness of the light-colored birch ply is refreshing as it opens up a compact home allowing the rooms to flow from one to another seamlessly.
The clean, unblemished finish gives it a contemporary touch and rawness seldom found in darker stains. The flawless exposed finish and its usage across the home from divider to furniture and storage makes the home look laid-back, stylish and surreal.
Who lives here: Mahek Lalan (Architect himself) with his wife
Location: Vile Parle (West), Mumbai
Year built: 2017
Size: 780 sq. feet
Type: Apartment with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms
Designed by: SML Architects
Photograph courtesy for the images: Sameer Tawde
Budget: 27 Lakhs
Birch Plywood that in its raw, exposed form is used in various capacities from door and window shutters to jambs and handles, from fixed furniture elements, partitions and storage units to screens, table tops, drawers and beds. With edges left raw and exposed, with a sealing coat of clear matte oil, the plywood creates a sense of a warm yet spare home monolithic in formation yet delicate in its articulation.
The sense of seamlessness continues with the other major material element – the concrete floor that unifies the apartment and forms the second part of the material backdrop against which the lives of inhabitants of the home would play out against.
Layout:
As one enters the house, the first space that one encounters is the dining area with the a living room to its right. Further ahead of the dining space straight ahead is the open kitchen. After that on the right is the guest bedroom with an attached bathroom. And at the very end is the master bedroom with its attached bathroom.
The architect says, ” it was conscious step to form an abode of calm and restraint through an extreme paring down of the palette to a few basic materials. “
Resources:
Lights: Concrete dining pendants above dining table by Gomaads
Paints: Asian Paints
Furnishings: Fab India
Sofas: Couch Potato
Dining table: Custom made inhouse
Dining chairs: Rubberband Products
