Interior architecture · Mumbai · Est. 2014
Every spacehas a before.
We are an eleven-person studio working on residential and workplace interiors across western India. We are not decorators. We move walls, redraw light, and rebuild the volume before a single object enters the room.
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Hillside Residence · Bandra West
A 2,400 sq ft flat with nine internal walls.
The brief asked for more storage. The problem was not storage — it was that no room could see daylight from more than one direction. We removed four walls, moved the kitchen to the south face, and gave the plan a single continuous edge.
Approach
Three things we do before anything is specified.
01
We begin with the volume, not the furniture.
Proportion is decided before anything is specified. If the ceiling plane, the window line and the floor level are wrong in relation to each other, no amount of good furniture repairs it. We spend the first three weeks of every project drawing sections.
Sections, not moodboards
02
Material before colour.
Colour is the last decision we make and the first one clients want to discuss. We resolve it by settling the materials — how the oak is cut, whether the plaster is burnished or matt, where the brass is left to go dull. Colour then follows almost automatically.
Samples on site, never on screen
03
Every room needs one quiet moment.
A place where nothing happens. An empty length of wall, a deep sill, a shadow gap that runs uninterrupted. Rooms that are working everywhere at once are exhausting to live in, and they are the most common failure in interiors we are asked to fix.
Restraint is a specification
The entranceThe living roomThe kitchenThe courtyard
The entrance
We made the entrance smaller
It sounds like the wrong move. We dropped the entry ceiling to just above head height and kept the walls dark. Because you squeeze through somewhere tight and dim first, the living room you step into next feels enormous. We changed nothing about the living room itself — only what you pass through to reach it.
The living room
We pulled the sofa away from the wall
The seating used to be pushed flat against the longest wall, which made the whole room read like a corridor you walk down. We floated it a metre out and left that wall completely bare. Same sofa, same floor area, nothing added — the room simply stopped feeling long and started feeling wide.
The kitchen
We swapped the kitchen with a bedroom
The kitchen sat in the darkest corner of the flat while a spare bedroom had all the south light — the arrangement most apartments are stuck with. We traded the two rooms. The family now spends its whole day in the brightest room in the house instead of the dimmest.
The courtyard
We turned the junk balcony into a small open courtyard
There was a narrow service balcony holding a washing machine and things nobody wanted. We opened it to the sky and put windows from both bedrooms onto it. Those bedrooms now get a breeze that crosses the room and daylight from a second direction, and the dark internal corridor finally has something to look at.
Material studio
The decision clients actually lose sleep over.
This is the island from the Hillside Residence kitchen. Change the finish and see what it does to the room. Every option is something we have specified and detailed on a real project — including who supplies it.
European Oak
Rift-sawn so the figure stays quiet. White oil keeps it from yellowing under warm light.
Selected work
Six projects, and the decision that made each one work.
Hillside Residence
Nine internal walls reduced to five, and a kitchen moved into the light.Colaba Apartment
A heritage-grade shell restored, with every new element held off the original walls.Alibaug Farmhouse
Built for 40 days of occupancy a year, and for the 325 days it stands empty.Kala Ghoda Studio
A 26-person design office with no assigned desks and no meeting rooms.Worli Sea Face Duplex
A sea view on every wall, which turned out to be the problem.Matunga Family Home
Three generations, one kitchen, and a corridor that had to do the diplomatic work.
The studio
Eleven people, six to eight projects a year.
Atelier Halda was founded in Mumbai in 2014 by Meera Halda, after nine years in practice between Mumbai and Rotterdam. The studio works on residential and workplace interiors across western India, and takes on deliberately few projects.
We draw in section, we make samples on site, and we run our own site supervision rather than subcontracting it. Around 94% of our work arrives by referral, which is the only metric of client satisfaction we have ever trusted.
The studio in numbers
- Projects completed
- 48
- People in the studio
- 11
- Founded
- 2014
- Work from referral
- 94%
What clients say
We had already renovated twice and made it worse both times. Halda were the first people who told us the problem was the plan, not the finishes. That conversation was uncomfortable and completely correct.
Sixteen months, and not one item on the final account that had not been discussed with us in advance. In this city that is close to unheard of.
They designed for the house being empty, which is not something I had ever thought to ask for. Two monsoons later I have not had to call anybody.
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Tell us about the space.
We take on six to eight projects a year. The first conversation is 45 minutes, on site if you are in Mumbai, and there is no charge for it. If we are not right for the project we will say so and suggest who is.