Designer havens: Tahiliani Homes is all about 'bringing the outside in'

"The concept of cross-ventilation is vanishing in new buildings, but wisdom is in recognising what works where & why"

Homes in Goa, villas in Vizag in coastal Andhra Pradesh, a farmhouse near the Delhi-Gurugram border — there are common threads that run through them when they have a Tarun Tahiliani touch. You’ll find water bodies, open spaces, and lots of greenery. These are homes steeped in luxury, the kind that speaks with nature.

 

The haute couturier — who says if he wasn’t a fashion designer, he would have been an architect, “had I studied physics and chemistry” — believes in the concept of “bringing the outside in”.

 

“A lot of things in fashion or homes should logically be determined by the lives we lead,” he says. “Today, for example, the concept of cross ventilation is vanishing in new buildings, but wisdom lies in recognising what works where and why.”

 

An icon who has inspired him deeply in this aspect is Balkrishna Doshi. The only Indian architect to have won the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel of architecture, Doshi would blur the boundaries between the outside and the inside, often with the use of natural lighting.

 

“I had seen his work where he had used slits, so the light patterns in the rooms changed as the day progressed. It left a mark on me,” Tahiliani says. “In city homes, especially, it becomes important to bring the natural elements into the house. I always like natural light and, if I can have it, fresh air,” which remains an elusive luxury in Delhi, the city he calls home.  

Jahan Tahiliani (left) and Tarun Tahiliani

 

As he offers a tour of Tahiliani Homes, his boutique interior and architecture design studio, the designer is joined by his son, Jahan, in Delhi’s upscale Vasant Kunj. 

A 12,000 sq ft home in Hyderabad transformed to display ‘India Eclectic’ design

 

The TT tag

 

The studio, which started out as Ahilia Homes in 2016, evolved into Tahiliani Homes when Jahan came in with his experience from real estate consultancy CBRE. He joined as chief executive officer, and focused on business developments, sales, operations, and marketing. Tahiliani continues to helm the design part of the business.

 

“Eventually, we started getting assignments for branding and designing homes. And one of the things people wanted to do was to leverage our brand. That led us to change our name,” says Jahan. “Even today, my father has the final word on every design aspect of a project.”

 

Besides providing interior design services, the company develops and builds properties for people venturing into hospitality or those building their homes. It also takes up redevelopment projects.

 

The process begins with the concept — mood boards, references. Then comes design development — sketches that involve elevations, hard finishes. And finally, construction — where the vendors, and later contractors, come into the picture.

 

Through it all, the signature elements of Tahiliani Homes stand out.

 

“We love natural light and homes that are open to nature,” says Jahan. “When we’re designing holiday homes, for example in Goa amid a naturescape, the idea is to bring in as much of the outdoors as we can.” So, the homes typically have a water body in them.

 

For city properties, they ensure there’s some amount of greenery.

 

For example, for a farmhouse spread over 2.5 acres in Rajokri, near the Delhi-Gurugram border, they designed a network of villas, working with a Japanese foresting expert that the owners had brought in.

 

Together, the designer and the foresting consultant worked their magic.

 

“Instead of going in with a basic rectangular shape, we wanted to bring the forest into the home,” says Jahan. So, for each room, they gave glass walls on three sides, surrounded by the forest. As a result, each room has its own private foliage instead of a linear garden — “like a cottage in the woods”. 

(Clockwise from left) The Salvador Villas in Socorro, Goa, complete with private pools, water bodies, and abundant foliage; a cottage in the woods near the Delhi-Gurugram border; the Glass Villa at Nachinola, Goa, spread over 6,800 sq ft

 

For inspiration, Tahiliani senior often turns to Geoffrey Bawa, the late Sri Lankan architect credited with founding the tropical modernist movement — an indoor-outdoor style that marries modernist architectural principles with tropical vernacular traditions. In the first house he designed in Goa, he brought in the courtyard — a nod to Bawa.

 

When designing living spaces as well, Tahiliani likes to stick to his “India Modern” aesthetic, which blends traditional Indian craftsmanship with contemporary design and structure.

 

“I keep using the term ‘India Modern’ for my design sensibilities,” he says. “When I see homes today, they’re just vast expanses of Italian marble, because somehow that has come to define luxury.” He likes to bring in the traditional, authentic Indian aspects to the homes he designs — Indian stones, Indian mosaic.

 

So much so that even the few times he was forced to work with Italian marble, he ensured it was cut and broken into hundreds of small pieces that could be used in a mosaic design. In his own new factory in Gurugram, he has incorporated red granite. 

A glass treehouse in New Delhi, inspired by German-American architect Mies van der Rohe’s Edith Farnsworth House in Illinois

 

Bare and beautiful

 

Homes, when you strip them of decor and furniture, can look like hollow shells. For Tahiliani Homes, the designer has other plans. He works to ensure that even a bare room, without its furnishing and objects, looks beautiful — an ethos he is confident can be recognised across all properties under Tahiliani Homes.

 

“It could be a patti or a border on the floor, a stone carpet, or repurposing things that can be used in the basic three structures — the floor, roof, or walls — like using an old haveli door on the ceiling,” says Jahan.

 

Currently, the father-son team is developing villas on the Vizag coast.

 

“Someone’s bought 100 acres of coastal land in Vizag and is looking to develop villas,” says Jahan. “We have just finished the initial design of the first villa on a two-acre plot.” Perhaps, it will eventually lead to a hotel, but that’s for the owner to decide, he adds.

 

Over the next year or two, the company is looking to make its next big foray into Goa — a state that Jahan believes will evolve from being just a tourist destination to a vibrant business hub. “We are big believers of the Goa story, and within India there is no alternative to the destination, really,” he says. 

 

Perhaps, that’s a reason the duo turns to Goa again and again. Among some of the starkly beautiful homes they have created here is Glass Villa, which sits by the serene backwaters of Nachinola. And yes, like most Tahiliani Homes, it has a water body — a pool that mirrors its brick-and-glass exterior.    Photos: Courtesy Tahiliani Homes