Every year, new lists announce the
top 10 architects in India.
Rarely does anyone stop to ask what the phrase should mean. So we put the question to Aparna Kaushik, whose New
Delhi studio has completed more than
300 luxury homes across India and
Dubai, and whose work has appeared everywhere from
Architectural Digest to Forbes. A conversation about restraint, craft, and what clients should really look for.
Q: You have said the most powerful design tool is not freedom but restraint. What do you mean by that?
“Freedom gives you options. Restraint gives a house its character. Anyone can add another material, another gesture,
another dramatic moment. The discipline is in what you refuse. A home built with restraint feels inevitable, as if
it could not have been any other way. When people call a house timeless, that is usually what they are responding
to: the absence of everything unnecessary.”
Q: What separates a top architect from a famous one?
“Involvement. There are practices where the principal signs the concept and a team you never meet delivers it. I
review every drawing that leaves this studio and I walk the sites. Fame is a marketing outcome. Being worthy of a
client's trust is a daily practice. If I am counted among the top architects in India, I would want it to be for
that.”
Q: Your work joins European classicism with the Indian tropical tradition. Why that pairing?
“Because both are honest about climate. Classicism gives proportion and calm, and it has outlived every trend for a
reason. The tropical tradition gives us the verandah, the courtyard, the shaded threshold, all the intelligence
India has always had about sun and air. Brought together sincerely, they make homes that are grand and breathable at
the same time.”
Q: Why does your studio keep everything in-house, from interiors to furniture and art?
“Because a home is one composition. The moment its parts come from different hands, you can feel the seams. When we
control the architecture, the interiors, the landscape, the lighting, even the furniture and the art on the walls,
the house speaks one language from the gate to the last shelf. It asks more of us. It is worth it every time.”
Q: You now run an active practice in Dubai. What has that taught the studio?
“That standards travel but assumptions do not. Dubai asks for a different rigour: municipality approvals, community
rules, and delivery to Gulf timelines. Working in Emirates Hills, Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Hills has sharpened how we
deliver in India as well. Our clients increasingly live between the two countries. Their architects should too.”
Q: What should someone ask before choosing an architect for a luxury home?
“Three things. Who will actually design my home: ask to meet that person. Can I stand inside something you have
completed: photographs forgive too much. And who will build it: if the answer is a contractor the studio has never
worked with, the renders are promises, not plans. The right practice welcomes all three questions.”
Q: What comes next for luxury homes in India?
“Quieter luxury and deeper craft. The years of loud interiors are ending. Clients now want homes that feel
collected, personal and calm. And India's own crafts, in stone, wood and metal, are becoming the mark of distinction
again. The top of the market is returning to what it should never have left: sincerity.”
Aparna Kaushik Design Group accepts a limited number of private commissions across India and the UAE each year.
Book a private consultation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aparna Kaushik Design Group
Editorial Desk
Aparna Kaushik founded Aparna Kaushik Design Group in 2008 as an ultra-luxury, principal-led architecture and interior design house and is recognised among India's foremost architects for her large private residential commissions. Her studio's UAE practice serves UHNW clients across Dubai and Abu Dhabi, delivering architecture, interiors, furniture, lighting, landscape, art curation, and turnkey execution as one coordinated service.
aparnakaushik.com/about-us | enquiries@aparnakaushik.com | @aparnakaushikofficial
