A method to this urban madness

Over decades, we have watched our garden city morph into a technological supercity, its impressive expansion aiming to compete with the likes of the futuristic metropolises of China. Bengaluru today is teeming with upcoming interior artists, armed with degrees and portfolios. They have burst onto the scene where realty is bullish. Rightly so. Go fishing where the fish are biting. And yet, “It is an unfortunate stereotype that interior designers will dictate that look based on their vision or talent, regardless of the clients’ wishes.” Just goes to show that communication and collaboration are key to achieving any design success. Designers while being professionals, need to stop and smell the roses, rekindle their passion to create and serve. The customer, even today, is, undoubtedly, King.

As with a living, breathing human, the Garden City’s struggle to retain its anthropomorphic self is real and palpable. As skylines turn to steel and glass and roadways are labyrinthine, the city continues to battle populist structures with its eco brigade leading the way with renewed endurance.

Popular comebacks have seen a few such trends that remain timeless in our city of lakes.

Local Materials
India is famed for its handicrafts. Made and Make in India is a movement to showcase

Earthenware and ceramics for cladding nooks and crannies aside from being used in pottery as room accents, natural bamboo Roman shades in earthy tones, the versatile terracotta with its raw, warm tactile surface, is throwing up not only flooring and ceiling tiles but chicken bricks and lampshades.

Tip: Glazed floor and wall tiles, once popular in Europe, found their way into India with the Portuguese invasion a few 100 years ago. These stunning hand painted tiles, Azulejos, often descriptive of a time and a community built centuries ago, now find favour in many homes in our city. A recent trend to import them all the way from the beach city of Goa, by the truckloads, has seen a surge. Explore this option for a vibrant infusion into your home.

Making small spaces look bigger
Minimalism as a lifestyle creed is a tough transition for most of us. Assigning more to memories than memoirs is a challenge. For most of us, a physical manifestation of keepsakes is a way of life. Framed rock concert passes, a prom night dry-pressed corsage, ticket stubs of that romantic drive-in flick, usher in a flashback, snapshots of notable moments. To imagine a pristine, parsimonious life sans memorabilia and allurement seems melancholic and barren. “Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go,” James Baldwin said this and I bet he knew what he was talking about.

Tip: Taking minimalism head on while retaining our timelines of nostalgia, go Japanese with frugal furnishing. Accentuate a focal point in the space… be it a bed or a wall with paintings, stencils, decals or murals to give a space a much-needed facelift. Many formal and semi-formal living rooms have adapted the Chabudai and Tatami combination of seating. This seems to be a popular trend amongst the advertising and film making communities in the city where much of the brainstorming (over copious amounts of food and drinks) seems to transpire whilst one is perched cross-legged on mats or cushions on the floor.

Herb Gardens
Many homes are slowly gravitating to the libertarian shift of farm to table. For cities to remain viable, they should become the producers of resources, rather than stay insatiable consumers. While most of us don’t own farms, kitchen and herb gardens have sprung up in many homes. The need for self sustenance in the future seems to loom large in our country of droughts, climate changes and water shortages. Farming and cultivation on a minute scale for individual and family-sized consumption, is a trend that is catching up rapidly in the city. With the help of a landscape architect for larger expanses or an interior designer for smaller plots, we foresee a future where most of our daily farm intake could be solely from our kitchen gardens.

Tip: Plan on paper with layout. Install pathways for movement with the use of gravel, bricks, pebbles, rocks and sand. A hot new trend is rooftop and terrace herb gardens with partial shade or canopied enclosures. Grab that unused corner and survey for proximity to a water source and irrigation, waterproofing, test for soil requirements with free draining, best access with four to six hours of uninterrupted sunlight. With our temperate climes, Indians are blessed with year round sunlight but for us Bengalureans monsoons and winters always extend a cloud cover for weeks on end… so best to address these with retractable canopies and wire for lighting to supplement for months when lighting is low. Build around an interesting focal point perhaps a birdbath, fountain or seating, design herb beds grouping together ones to achieve a harmonious mix with similar needs as per foliage, flowering, colours, aroma etc cocktail herbs, kitchen salad herbs, tea herbs, Asian cooking herbs.

Multifun citonality
Mark Twain said, “Buy Land, they’re not making it anymore.” While this may seem an impossible dream for many, tiny homes and micro-apartments may be a thing of the future with urban living. The jostle for space is deemed to be an imminent certainty. As spaces grow smaller with land at a premium, floorplans are progressively turning minimal for condos and apartment complexes, with room only for creative aesthetic pieces with functionality.

Tip: Multifuctionality in furniture and accents is the only way forward to ensure spaces are optimally used and liveable. With a goal to maximise living spaces without being thrifty on style, Urban Space research and design is a study on the ability to collapse furniture with ease into walls or the floors, provide stackable fittings, create Transformer-like equipment that may mean numerous ways to employ them. With Mumbai-esque urban living conditions forecasted for a flourishing metro like Bengaluru, an ancillary industry will soon be available to cater to our shrinking spaces.

The writer is an interior designer and director at Sugar My Space, Studio SMS.