This Hyderabad apartment is the result of a serendipitous meeting at the home of a mutual friend between a young couple - the wife, a writer, and the husband a banker - and Kunal and Khushboo Khandelwal. It quickly led to a commission for a new. ‘The couple wanted to come home to a quiet haven,’ say the Khandelwals who founded their Mumbai-based Studio Design in 2000.
’The mandir stands apart, both figuratively and literally, with a statue of Vishnu enrobed within an arched, recessed vitrine that might have been described as monastic were it not for the gold halo pattern on the wall, and circular brass inserts on the floor inspired by the Vedic scriptures.‘Underplaying something is always a challenge creatively,’ Khandelwal says. ‘You need to know how much to underplay.