India’s latest design landmark, Nilaya Anthology, has opened in Mumbai with a grand unveiling that positioned it firmly on the worldwide design map. Developed by Indian firm Asian Paints, the showroom introduces a brand new idea: a worldwide luxurious design vacation spot with an Indian perspective. Greater than only a retail house, it indicators a shift – one the place Indian design, craft, and heritage are positioned on the centre of the worldwide dialog.
Set inside an unlimited 100,000 sq ft house designed by native architect Rooshad Shroff, Nilaya Anthology transforms a former mill in Mumbai’s tightly packed industrial district into an immersive design expertise. The showroom brings collectively worldwide and Indian design, juxtaposing international manufacturers with native craft and historic artifacts. In a single nook, an vintage cast-bronze Shiva is displayed alongside elephant grass baskets from Ghana, Japanese textiles, and Rietveld’s ‘Utrecht’ armchair – creating an interaction of cultures and eras.
Guests to Nilaya Anthology arrive in a double-height orangery, a lush inexperienced house that leads right into a central open gallery
(Picture credit score: Hashim Badani for Nilaya Anthology)
On the helm of this formidable imaginative and prescient is inside designer Pavitra Rajaram, artistic director of Nilaya Anthology and a longtime advocate for India’s craft heritage. Her strategy ensures the house stays cohesive fairly than chaotic, inviting guests to discover at their very own tempo. ‘We felt very strongly that the shop should not have a prescriptive, linear journey, and that truly you need to uncover it, like a world,’ she explains.
The journey begins in a double-height orangery, a lush inexperienced house that leads right into a central open gallery. Surrounding it, intimate rooms home an array of glassware, ceramics, candles, and textiles sourced from the world over. A sweeping ramp presents a dramatic perspective of the gallery under, main guests upstairs to devoted areas for contract shoppers, the place lighting, loos, and floor supplies are showcased.
The very fact is that Indians have been shopping for all the world over for hundreds of years, and so they proceed to take action. What we wish to say is, the Indian market has come of age
Pavitra Rajaram, Inventive Director, Nilaya Anthology
On the rear of the showroom, one among India’s main style designers, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, debuts his Artwork Basis with an exhibition that includes artist-in-residence Atish Mukherjee, whose work reinterprets the Bengal Faculty of Artwork. A staircase results in a lavish house devoted to Sabyasachi’s wallpapers and drapes, designed completely for Asian Paints – a maximalist’s fever dream.
Just a few years in the past, a dedication to such an expansive bricks-and-mortar retail idea would have been unthinkable. However Nilaya Anthology’s founders consider clients are craving bodily experiences after years of digital transactions following the worldwide pandemic. ‘Folks have been actually consuming and transacting with out expertise,’ Rajaram displays. ‘What can we do to deliver again the sense of expertise, the sense of surprise that ought to encompass one thing like this?’
Curated by artistic director Pavitra Rajaram, the showroom brings collectively worldwide and Indian design, juxtaposing international manufacturers with native craft and antiques
(Picture credit score: Hashim Badani for Nilaya Anthology)
That sense of surprise is obvious all through. Nina Yashar’s Milanese Nilufar gallery is making its Indian debut right here the place it occupies a main place on the bottom ground alongside Indian design pioneer Vikram Goyal. Right here, his eponymous studio, famend for its repoussé metalwork (and featured by The Future Excellent at Design Miami 2024), has conjured a mesmerising wall-mounted set up referred to as ‘Silken Passage’, that pays homage to the Silk Street.
Elsewhere within the retailer, items from his New Dehli-based homeware model Viya House embody furnishings, lighting, decor and textiles. ‘That is the most important showcase of our work exterior our personal studio, and it is our Mumbai debut,’ Goyal tells Wallpaper*. ‘I am thrilled to be a part of this nice idea, as a result of I’ve not seen such a global design vacation spot wherever else truly.’ Italian model Paola Lenti has reworked the outside terrace, whereas the primary ground reads as a roll name of European design manufacturers.
Rajaram needed the house to unfold as a journey, inviting guests to discover at their very own tempo
(Picture credit score: Hashim Badani for Nilaya Anthology)
On the opening, a lot of the dialog targeted on India’s rising affect within the international design trade. ‘The Indian buyer is all the time an afterthought, and that is one thing we actually, actually wish to change,’ Rajaram states. Even 2 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion-strong market, she factors out, is a ‘humongous’ quantity. ‘The very fact is that Indians have been shopping for all the world over for hundreds of years, and so they proceed to take action. What we wish to say is, the Indian market has come of age.’
A sequence of extra intimate areas organized across the central atrium (such because the Home of Curiosity pictured above) home works by rising ceramicists, metallic staff, weavers and glassmakers
(Picture credit score: Hashim Badani for Nilaya Anthology)
The showroom’s founders hope to redefine how worldwide manufacturers have interaction with India – not simply as a shopper market, however as an integral a part of the design trade. ‘One of many aims right here was to create an area the place worldwide manufacturers can acceptable their very own design language, fairly than counting on aggregators or intermediaries,’ says Amit Syngle, CEO and MD at Asian Paints. ‘There has all the time been a niche between how international luxurious manufacturers current themselves and the way they really combine into the Indian market. We needed to alter that.’
Once you set your personal requirements, the world will come to you. Luxurious can by no means be created from some extent of subjugation. It must be created from some extent of confidence
Sabyasachi Mukherjee, dressmaker
However as Sabyasachi Mukherjee notes, India’s ascent within the design world additionally requires a shift in self-perception from inside, shifting away from a mindset formed by colonial historical past. ‘We have to set our personal requirements for ourselves. And while you set your personal requirements, the world will come to you,’ he says. ‘Luxurious can by no means be created from some extent of subjugation. It must be created from some extent of confidence.’
Though the providing is deliberately international, alongside established Indian names akin to Sabyasachi and Vikram Goyal, there are many rising Indian voices to be discovered as properly. These embody Srila Mookerjee, whose jewel-like glassware is mouth-blown in Kolkata, West Bengal; ceramicist Tejashree Sagvekar, who forages clay from the shores of Mumbai for her textural ceramics; and Ladies Weave from Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, which produces handwoven textiles constituted of repurposed silk. In the meantime, the Nilaya Anthology’s in-house design workforce has reimagined iconic chairs in wicker.
Vikram Goyal’s eponymous metallic work studio is making its Mumbai debut within the house with the biggest showcase of its work to this point
(Picture credit score: Hashim Badani for Nilaya Anthology)
Past being a showcase, Nilaya Anthology is designed as a cultural hub, with curated talks, exhibitions, and interactive programming. The Orangery – a uncommon inexperienced oasis in Mumbai’s dense city panorama – will host occasions, whereas a forthcoming restaurant will present a setting for intimate, design-led gatherings, musical evenings, and themed dinners.
One other standout characteristic is the fabric library, an evolving archive of over 1,800 finishes, textures, and sustainable supplies. Providing designers a tactile useful resource, it reinforces the showroom’s perception that design is greatest skilled, not simply consumed. ‘Design is to be savoured and never devoured,’ Rajaram concludes. ‘Design is a dialog. It is a discovery. It is a continuum.’
nilayanthology.com
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Supply: Wallpaper
