Sonia Gehlot

Sonia Gehlot is the founder and principal architect of Architecture & Beyond, a Mumbai practice working across architecture and interiors. In two decades the studio has taken on heritage apartments in the city’s art deco belt, a lawyers’ chambers in Kala Ghoda, a wellness centre inside a colonial-era building, farmhouses and hill houses: a range that has less to do with building type than with a way of working.

That way of working starts with the people who will use the room rather than with a style. It is why a chambers ended up in polka dots, why a second home for two divers was built around salvaged shipwreck fittings, and why a healing centre was stripped back to its rafters and arched windows before anything new was added. Colour and pattern are used confidently and on purpose; old furniture is refurbished rather than replaced, because the studio takes reuse seriously.

The result is work that has been published by Architectural Digest and Elle Decor, and, more to the point, rooms that go on being lived in exactly as they were drawn.