IT'S A SHORE THING

If there were ever such a thing as a shoreline crafted by hand, it would look something like this sea-facing Mumbai eyrie by Mind Manifestation

- VAISHNAVI NAYEL TALAWADEKAR

The thing about sea-facing abodes, as some designers might argue, is that attempting to equal or exceed the view is a rather impractical folly. So impractical, that when it came to designing a coastal eyrie in Mumbai's Lower Parel, architects Anand Deshmukh and Chetan Lahoti of Pune-based multidisciplinary practice Mind Manifestation decided to simply opt out of the said zero-sum game by extending the view indoors. "We imagined the interior as a sun-warmed beach, like something the tide could have washed ashore," says Anand. True to the pair's vision, the 45th-storey, 3,000 sq ft duplex seemingly levitates between the sky and sea, somehow, at once, evading the currents of heightened activity and existing in a slipstream of its own. There's a subterranean quality to the material palette - think floaty hues, earthy textures, wooden decks à la a beachside boardwalk as if the sea itself swallowed the home whole and surfaced it back to life.