An Ahmedabad apartment that illustrates minimal living

PVDRS craft pragmatic style using restrained materiality and colours.

Curated by: Rupali Sebastian
Photographs: Rahul Zota; courtesy PVDRS

The brief and the design intent

This 4,760-sq-ft apartment for a nuclear family in Ahmedabad is a unique take on lean living by PVDRS. The designers reveal that the client’s brief was simple: to create a modern, stylish, clutter-free and easy-to-maintain home. “In response to this brief, our intent was to create an interior space that accepts the apartment’s shell as is and then introduce a language that is complementary to the shell, is functional and stylish,” elucidates Megha Patel-Vadodaria, co-founder, PVDRS. “This design language is cohesively applied throughout the entire apartment with pops of colours and design elements that would impart an identity to each space whilst ensuring overall integrity.”

The material palette

The overall interior palette comprises Burberry Beige Italian marble, white textured walls, exposed concrete ceiling fitted with sleek minimal lighting, furniture in valsadi teak wood and neutral upholstery and furnishings in shades of grey.

The public zone

The living and dining space is treated as the heart of this home. The family expects to host a large gathering of relatives and friends and that called for designing the public volume within the apartment to accommodate 25-30 people. “As a response, we created nooks within the large living space with multipurpose furniture surfaces to allow for a big party to disintegrate into small groups. The idea here is to give meaning to a living space and embrace its dynamic use,” states Keyur Vadodaria, PVDRS’ other founder.

The challenges

The limitations to make civil changes within the apartment have led to many creative uses of design elements. The wood-veneered finished bay window in the daughter’s bedroom brings in a functional element in the form of a cosy reading corner, while changing the perceived volume of the window. In the bedroom of the teenage son, who is passionate about gaming and coding, a large island work desk was designed as a connected entity with the bed separated by a low partition, facing the window. The north-facing fourth bedroom room was converted into a family room where an L-shaped seating corner with uninterrupted views of the Ahmedabad skyline became the pièce de résistance.

This project illustrates PVDRS’ conviction to accept the built shell in its raw nature and create a cohesive design language that is modern, clutter-free and stylish, while simultaneously generating spaces with individual identities without compromising the overall integrity of the whole.