In a moment when Indian interiors are increasingly shaped by speed, spectacle, and social media polish, Aditya Tognatta, Co-Founder & Principal Architect of Custom Design Stories and Ananya Sharma, Partner & Principal Designer offer a quieter, more demanding position. Their practice treats interior design not as surface treatment but as a form of spatial intelligence rooted in planning, restraint, and lived experience. In this conversation with Asma Rafat, Senior Correspondent, Realty+, they speak candidly about authorship, sameness, sustainability, and the pressures that flatten design into content. What emerges is a philosophy that resists easy visuals and insists on interiors that think, age, and hold meaning beyond the frame.
Interior design in India is often seen as decorative rather than strategic. How do you position your role when clients underestimate the intellectual and functional depth of the work?
>> That misunderstanding exists because decoration is visible, while design operates beneath the surface. What people often call interior design is really styling — colour, furniture, finishes. The work we do begins much earlier. It’s about spatial logic, movement, behaviour, light, material performance, and how a space actually functions over time.
When a client underestimates that depth, we don’t try to convince them with theory — we demonstrate it through process. We show how every aesthetic decision is anchored in function and intent. Design, for us, is not something applied after construction; it’s a strategic framework that shapes how a space is used, experienced, and remembered.
Once clients understand that a well-designed interior can change efficiency, comfort, and even mindset, the conversation shifts. At that point, decoration becomes the by-product and not the purpose of design.
As principal designers, how do you divide authorship on a project? At what point does a shared vision become a negotiation?
>>Authorship, for us, is not about ownership of ideas but about responsibility for clarity. A shared vision is established early — through intent, values, and a common reading of the project’s constraints. Once that framework is clear, individual voices can operate freely within it without diluting the work.
Negotiation begins when authorship is mistaken for expression rather than alignment. Design is not a collection of personal gestures; it’s a disciplined conversation between ideas, limits, and context. The discourse is never about, “I want black or gray”, rather the experience and the overall coherence of the space. When disagreements arise, they are resolved not through compromise, but through critique — the project itself becomes the measure. The strongest idea survives, regardless of where it originates.
In that sense, authorship remains collective as long as ego stays secondary to the work. The moment personal identity overtakes spatial intelligence, the design loses coherence — and that’s where we draw the line.
Many interiors today look polished but interchangeable. What pressures in the industry are pushing designers toward sameness, and how do you resist that pull?
>>Sameness is no accident — it’s the industry working exactly as designed. Speed is rewarded, risk is penalised, and approval is outsourced to algorithms. Designers are encouraged to reference more than they think, replicate more than they question, and deliver spaces that are instantly recognisable because they have already been consumed elsewhere.
Polish has become a substitute for authorship. If something photographs well, it’s declared successful, even if it says nothing. The pressure isn’t to design — it’s to conform without appearing to.
We resist this by treating familiarity as a warning sign. If a space feels comfortable too quickly, it’s probably borrowed. We strip ideas back until they’re inconvenient, unrepeatable, and specific to the project at hand. Because the moment a design becomes interchangeable, it stops being design and turns into content.
How do you balance a strong personal design language with the need to respond to context, client personality, and use patterns?
>>Interchangeability is the result of design being reduced to a single, overused language. One code repeated endlessly — safe palettes, familiar forms, approved gestures — until everything starts to look correct and mean nothing. The industry rewards recognisability over meaning, speed over interpretation, and visual consensus over thought.
Polish has become the dominant currency. If a space can be instantly decoded, it’s deemed successful. But when design speaks in only one voice, it stops communicating and starts echoing. Context disappears, history is flattened, and complexity is edited out in favour of universal approval.
We resist this by designing spaces that refuse to be read in one glance. We allow contradiction, layered references, and spatial tension to coexist. A project should speak in more than one register — functional, cultural, emotional — and not resolve itself immediately. Because the moment an interior becomes easily interchangeable, it has surrendered its intelligence and reduced itself to décor.
What is the hardest design decision you have had to defend in front of a client, and what did that moment teach you about conviction versus compromise?
>>One of the hardest truths in design is that clients want everything, yesterday, at a discount, and call it “luxury.” Defending a concept in that chaos requires a mix of stubbornness and diplomacy. The core design — spatial logic, functionality, longevity — is sacred; compromise happens only in materials, finishes, or methods that won’t kill the idea, not the other way around.
Conviction is protecting the soul of the space. Compromise is pretending that cutting corners on execution somehow counts as creativity. Most of the time, the real work isn’t designing; it’s translating impossible aspirations into something that actually works without looking like a defeat. As designers, we bridge the fantasy and the ledger, but let’s be honest — one always has to bend a little for reality, even if reality doesn’t deserve it.
Sustainability is frequently invoked but unevenly practiced. What does responsible interior design actually mean in day-to-day project choices?
>>The uncomfortable truth is that many clients simply don’t care — especially in a market fuelled by speed, aspiration, and peak consumerism. Sustainability is welcomed as a word, not as a commitment. What replaces it is plastic paneling, WPC louvers, POP layered onto every surface, and thick, unnecessary cladding designed to signal “luxury” while quietly accelerating waste.
Responsible interior design begins by refusing that logic. It means questioning why something needs to be covered at all, why materials are being added instead of space being resolved. Much of what is sold as design today is really concealment — hiding poor planning behind layers of decoration and disposability.
The real failure often occurs earlier. Sustainability does not begin at the furniture or finish level; it begins at the planning stage. When the architecture of a space is inefficient, poorly oriented, or structurally wasteful, no amount of eco-labelled material can redeem the interior. To pretend otherwise is performative.
How do you think social media has changed the way interiors are conceived, presented, and even judged, both positively and problematically?
>>Social media has accelerated visibility and flattened judgement. On the positive side, it has removed gatekeepers — ideas circulate faster, young practices find audiences, and design conversations are no longer confined to closed rooms. That shift is real and valuable.
What’s been lost is time — and with it, attention. Earlier, site visits were never just meetings. They were long, unscheduled encounters. Conversations with contractors turned into storytelling, shared experience, and the occasional problem-solving detour. Designers stayed on site not to supervise images, but to observe the unintended — light falling on a surface in an unexpected way, a space opening up more freely than planned, a moment that couldn’t have been drawn.
Today, interiors are often conceived for the frame before they are tested in reality. Spaces are judged by how efficiently they translate into photographs, not by how they unfold over hours, days, or years. What can’t be captured — spatial flow, material ageing, sensory nuance — is quietly edited out.Social media isn’t the problem; design without presence is. When architects stop lingering on site and start designing for screens, interiors lose their accidents — and with them, much of their intelligence
When working on residential versus commercial spaces, what shifts most in your thinking: scale, psychology, or responsibility?
>>All three shift, but responsibility shifts the most. Residential spaces are intimate — they absorb habits, routines, and contradictions. You’re designing for people who will notice everything over time. Mistakes linger. Comfort, memory, and use matter more than statements.
Commercial spaces operate differently. Scale becomes louder, psychology more performative. The space often has to communicate quickly — brand, intent, efficiency — sometimes at the cost of subtlety. But the responsibility there is collective: how many people pass through, how the space behaves under pressure, how it ages with use.
What remains constant is intent. Whether private or public, the danger is the same — designing for appearance rather than experience. The moment design prioritises impression over lived reality, scale becomes spectacle and psychology becomes manipulation. That’s where the work loses its ground.
Looking back, which early influences or mentors shaped how you see space today, and which assumptions from that phase have you since unlearned?
>> My early influences were less about aesthetics and more about resistance — designers who questioned the rules of their time rather than refining them. Louis Kahn taught me restraint: how light, silence, and structure can guide behaviour without spectacle. Charles Correa showed me that Indian space is not decorative but systemic — shaped by climate, ritual, and social life.
Later, thinkers like Zumthor and Pallasmaa made me unlearn speed. They reinforced that architecture is sensed before it is seen, and that slowness is not a weakness. Sottsass, Cedric Price, and James Turrell challenged the assumption that buildings must always assert themselves.
What I have unlearned most is control. Indian life — its thresholds, courtyards, and informal in-betweens — constantly reminds me that space gains meaning only when people occupy it. Design doesn’t end with completion; it begins there.
What do you think interior designers should be talking about more openly, but often avoid because it’s uncomfortable or commercially risky?
>>We avoid talking about how much of our industry is built on overproduction and insecurity. Too many interiors exist to mask poor planning, justify excess budgets, or keep the consumption cycle alive. It’s uncomfortable to admit that not every space needs to be redesigned — and commercially risky to say no.
We also avoid discussing authorship and ethics: who benefits from a project, who pays the real cost, and how often “client demand” is used as an excuse for intellectual laziness. Trend-led design is safer than critical design because it offends no one.
Most of all, we don’t talk enough about restraint. About designing less, building slower, and allowing spaces to age. These conversations don’t sell easily — but without them, interior design remains trapped between decoration and denial.
