10 impressive Indian homes of 2025 designed by AD100 architects and designers

Eclecticism comes easy to Aisha Rao. Anyone who is acquainted with the fashion designer and couturier’s eponymous label can attest to the fact that her unabashedly vibrant pieces aren’t for those who play it safe. Rao’s sartorial trademark appliqué work crafted from fabric waste and overlaid with aari, zardozi, and macramé—puts her in a league of her own, and over the past seven years, she has forged a reputation for herself, with five retail stores in Mumbai, Delhi, and her hometown of Hyderabad. Her latest creative accomplishment, however, marks a surprising departure from fashion. In a prolonged pursuit that has yielded a deeply personal reward, Rao designed the interiors of her family’s sprawling 20,000-square-foot mansion in Hyderabad. She says, “If there is a labour of love, it is this house.”

Pankaj Anand

Pankaj Anand

Four years in the making, the mansion stands on the same plot as her husband’s childhood home, which Rao moved into after marriage. With her second child on the way in 2019, the need arose to expand into a bigger space for herself, her husband, their two children, and her parents-in-law. “We moved out in the hope of renovating but ended up getting it to ground zero and rebuilding,” says Rao, who brought AD100 firm Studio Lotus on board for the architecture. After several discussions on architectural styles, they decided on a pristine white neoclassical structure, with multiple balconies along the central axis and tall bison-black Georgian bar windows, all of which open onto an expanse of green beyond.

Original text by Nuriyah Johar, edited for context.

A Journalist and Architect’s Art-Filled Home In Delhi

Avesh Gaur

Imagine the home of an architect married to a journalist. Whatever image you might form of this abode, all bets are off when it comes to the family house that architect Abhimanyu Dalal built, where he lives with his wife, Angana Parekh, who has spent much of her life in the hurly-burly of national dailies. The singular distinction of their park-facing home in a salubrious central New Delhi neighbourhood is the enthralling art collection within. It is vast, a virtual A to Z of modern and contemporary Indian artists that would easily outnumber—and outshine—the most comprehensive of art catalogues. There is nothing remotely random about the acquisition of these varied artworks, passionately but discriminatingly built up over decades. As he dwells on the series of gallery walls or the art-lined staircase of the three-storeyed house, Abhimanyu Dalal himself is bemused by his twin achievements—of how “the art has overtaken the architecture”.

Avesh Gaur

Avesh Gaur

The collecting gene, the 67-year-old architect muses, runs in the family. He is the youngest of a career diplomat’s three sons, and his parents collected Thomas and William Daniells’ aquatints, rare antique books and maps of India. These decorate the ground floor apartment that his widowed father occupied till his death, aged 99, two years ago. For his own home, Dalal replaced the conventional 1950s house on a 3,375-square-foot plot with an open-plan building, designed as a place of flowing, light-filled spaces. “There are no corridors. Only the bedrooms and kitchen have doors. Staircase landings open up into a study or lounge. A central plant-filled glass atrium from top to bottom amplifies the light.” Glass windows and shutters on an east-west axis give onto greenery. Although attached to other houses, no other building appears in sight. The house took three years to complete: it shows in the attentive detailing—from the louvred shutters, concealed curtain pelmets in teak and the subtly recessed, nail-free staircase handrail to the stairs in black granite treads matched with teak risers.