WHERE MEMORIES LIVE: INSIDE AR. FANCY GEORGE’S INTUITIVE, EVER-GROWING HOME

The late morning light at the Taj, Bengaluru had that soft, amber glow that makes conversations linger. The lobby hummed with quiet movement, clattering cups, a passing suitcase, the distant murmur of a conference but at a corner table, Ar. Fancy George settled in with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime reading spaces. She glanced around, noting materials, forms, small gestures of design the way others might notice weather. We had met to talk about her home, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t going to be a typical design conversation. Fancy speaks of spaces the way some people speak of people. Intimately, fondly, with a sense of shared history. And when she began describing the place she has built for herself, it felt less like a walkthrough of rooms and more like an unfolding memoir. Her home, she said, was never designed in the conventional sense.

It was grown, tended, and shaped with care. Some people design houses. Fancy designs feelings. With more than thirty years of experience, she has influenced how Fortune 500 companies think about workplaces, growth, and culture. She is co-founder of WiREnet World and a vocal advocate for design that puts people first. But her own home is where her philosophy becomes intensely personal. She remembers starting with one simple question: What makes me feel happy the moment I step inside? She laughs about how people often rush to hire designers for their homes, hoping someone else can read their minds. “Nobody can understand the essence of what you want,” she says. “Only you can.” Her own answer to happiness came from memory. She was born in Borneo, so the entrance to her home holds a tribal mask and a blowpipe. Not as trophies, not as decor, but as a greeting from another life. Inside, a bright elephant painting from Sri Lanka fills the room with colour. She recalls the artist’s pride more vividly than the price. Nepal offered another memory—the afternoons spent with Thangka painters, watching their craft take shape stroke by stroke. Fancy collects stories, not things. Each object enters her home only if it stirs something deep within her.

She calls her approach a trinity - Expression, Emotion and Experience. Even the apartment she chose came from instinct rather than logic. While most homebuyers want higher floors, Fancy chose the second because the windows open into the thick canopy of a tree. Standing there feels like being inside the foliage itself. “Nobody thinks of the second f loor,” she says. “But that view, it’s everything.” Her favourite corner is deliberately simple: a single chair facing the tree, set beside a wide three-metre lintel opening, a feature rare in modern urban construction. The apartment gives every room generous volume. But the view turns the space into something more intimate. That chair, bathed in green light, has become her sanctuary. The interior itself is quiet and warm. White walls. Wooden flooring. And a joyous “mishmash,” as she calls it, of pieces brought home over years. Nothing matches. Nothing is curated for effect. Everything feels alive.

For Fancy, a home is never truly complete. It changes as you do. One year brings a new piece from a trip. Another year demands a shift in layout. She avoids heavy built-ins for that reason. “Homes must stay dynamic,” she says. “If everything is f ixed, you get bored. Let the space move with you.” The only update she dreams of now is replacing her laminated floor with solid wood. But her elderly dog, who has grown accustomed to the surface, takes priority. She smiles when she talks about him. “I will wait,” she says. Sustainability, care, and empathy begin at home, and for her, design follows that rhythm.

Talking to her, you realise that Fancy’s home is less about aesthetics and more about honesty. It holds her memories, celebrates her travels, and makes room for growth. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is forced. It is a living diary. A place where stories rest on shelves and lean against walls. A place that opens its arms every time she walks in. A place where a tree outside the window feels like part of the family.