This family home in Mumbai brings together sharp geometry with thoughtful design

Architect Veeram Shah crafts a home for five with their personality woven into its every inch

There’s an intriguing reason why this house in Mumbai’s Dadar neighbourhood is monikered ‘Mosaic House’; the home isn’t just a well-curated tapestry of shapes, colours, and textures, but also a mindful tessellation of the unique needs and wants of each of its inhabitants.

Architect Veeram Shah of Ahmedabad-based firm Design ni Dukaan crafted this 2,200 square-foot space—his first ever in Mumbai—over a period of a year and a half, beginning right after the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s for a Gujarati family of five—an elderly couple, their elder son and his wife, and their younger son—sharing a three-bedroom apartment on the eleventh floor of a high-rise.

Right at the entrance, a mural bearing the family name is embellished next to an ellipsoid form that mimics an artist’s palette. The shape is mirrored on the floor, as it leads into the home that follows the theme in every corner, tying it into a cohesive whole. “We were given a bare shell apartment that had space for four bedrooms, but we used it for only three. We wanted to use the same marble flooring with inlays of different coloured stones for each room to represent the personalities and needs of the different members of the family,” says Shah.

The colour blue that dominates the living spaces of the apartment is inspired by a deity the family is devoted to. “It flows from the blue of Shrinath Ji’s mural in the mandir into the rest of the house, marking the kind of fluidity we even had during our conversations with the family,” explains Shah.

The Le Corbusier effect

The vibrant blue is offset by a mellowing brown and white, with every surface curving into ellipsoids of various sizes and forms. The very obvious influence of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier is unmissable. The icon’s obsession with geometric architecture is inscribed on every surface of this Mumbai home—from floors and ceilings, to the furniture and art. “Most of the furniture, barring the chairs in the dining space, are made in-house,” says Shah.

The design language is sculptural, and the corners are rounded. The living area stands a step above the rest of the common spaces, lying adjacent to the kitchen and dining area. There’s a swing, and a curiously shaped table at the centre of the seating area made of styrofoam. It looks deceptively heavy, but can be lifted with one hand.

“A sofa on the outer side along the passage—which we knew we wanted to keep clear—would’ve taken up more space, so we installed a swing instead. On top of that, they are Gujarati so a swing had to be there,” Shah laughs. Evidently, despite the contemporary chicness of the home, it stays rooted to the cultural nuances of the people it belongs to.

The doors to the mandir mimic old school radio shutters that have a curved track; the shape of the dining table—cast in micro-concrete with a terrazzo table-top—mirrors the light above, which was designed in-house by an intern.

Mindfulness in design

Upon entering the bedrooms, one immediately notices the personalities each of them wears. Unsurprisingly, they’re informed by the people in them. For the parents’ room, the edges of the bed had to be soft. “The elderly gentleman has a tendency of bumping into things so we had to make sure the bed has a soft base with rounded corners,” says Shah.

For the elder son and his wife, their bedroom demanded more space since they wished to share it with their future child. So the design incorporated ample storage and a dresser that doubles as a counter for miscellaneous objects that are picked up and dropped off on the go, without much thought. For the younger son—who is also significantly younger in age—an edgier black-and-gray aesthetic was employed. 

The olive-toned kitchen is much larger than a kitchen in a standard Mumbai apartment, and seamlessly attaches itself to the living and dining spaces so one doesn’t have to sweat much to grab a meal.

In the Mosaic House, the whole indeed is greater than the sum of its parts that come together to celebrate differences in perfect harmony.

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