Designer Insight: Charu Gandhi ~ Elicyon
AHEAD OF THEIR EXCITING OFFICE MOVE IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS - WE SAT DOWN AND SPOKE WITH CHARU GANDHI, DIRECTOR OF ELICYON, TO DISCUSS ALL THINGS INTERIOR DESIGN, DREAM PROJECTS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LIGHTING ...
How would you describe your interior style?
‘Tailored Environments’ is very much the staple of my personal style - combining a luxurious and timeless approach with interesting textures and bold threads of colour. In my own home for example, warm accents of burnt orange sit against a largely neutral palette. Having trained and practised as an Architect, my interior taste is rooted in a strong spatial approach. Leading from that, my signature touch is to ensure that every project tells a story through a flow of space, an interplay of light with layers of textures and materials that we add. That notion of a story woven around each project carries into the finest of details, from the finishes to the final flourish of objet and artwork. Personally, my Chelsea home boasts striking dual aspect windows and features that celebrate the properties space and high ceiling, while heritage pieces and contemporary artwork complete the comfort of my family home. I continue to champion craft and stunning materiality and do not have a single repetitive style stamp, so my home is a compilation of design books, the ceramics that I love collecting along with a lot of artisan glass pieces and my mother’s handmade silversmith pieces, which are art deco inspired and reflect my love of architecture.
We don’t have a house style and our aesthetic is all about our clients – we want to be an aspiration for the global elite through an unsurpassable service and an understanding of the ultimate balance between timeless luxury and artisan techniques. We create unique and exclusive environments tailored to the individual requirements of our clients, crafted with precision and care.
The extent of detail that we go into, both in our design vision but also our presentations to our clients is a signature touch. We draw almost every inch of the property, considering every junction, every facet so that the final product is inherently considered, beautiful and purposeful and leaves nothing to chance.
We often go above and beyond the completion of a project in the traditional sense from seasonal changing of flowers in a completed project, to curating an art collection specific and helping clients host events in their homes.
While creativity is at the heart of everything we do, it is grounded in a very process driven methodology. We have very clear stages to our projects, checklists and lessons learnt documents. This does not thwart our creativity at all, to the contrary by knowing the limits, we are better able to push them!
I always tell our clients and others that we work with, that we want the relationship to end better than it started. Our focus on building long term relationships and providing the ultimate bespoke service to our clients sets us apart from others, each project has a Director as a key point of contact and we are on hand to guide our clients through a really joyful project journey.
A private residence in London designed by Elicyon, featuring Cameron Design House's Salo Lunar
What would be your dream project?
We hope to continue to expand our vision and expertise globally across our exciting upcoming projects and have some amazing announcements to make as part of our portfolio in 2019. My dream project is aligned with the ethos that ‘Your best project is your next one’ - this makes reference to always learning, always growing and pushing the boundaries so that both you as a designer and your projects are in an ever evolving state. This is a very potent thought, it needs you to be very self-critical with yourself and your team on any lessons learnt, and to always be questioning how you can do something more special, more ground breaking with each project.
What do you find the most challenging aspect when designing a space?
If the fundamentals of a space are constrained, in terms of it’s aspect, ceiling height, format or natural light, that can prove a challenge but at the same time can become a point of interest within the home or sequence of spaces. We are often working in apartment buildings or with heritage properties, where we may be somewhat limited in the extent of changes to layout, aspect etc.
As a response, we have honed our skills in how we address these challenges, and have found innovative and often beautiful solutions to showcase the space.
How did you discover Cameron Design House?
We became aware of Cameron Design House through their positive reputation in the industry and also came across some great imagery of their products in the media. That prompted us to get in touch to collaborate with them on our project Dali and it’s been such a fantastic experience that we now tend to work with them on a range of projects.
A private residence in London designed by Elicyon, featuring Cameron Design House's Salo Lunar
How important is lighting in your schemes?
Elicyon’s ethos is to create Exquisite Interior Couture for our projects and lighting is a critical part of achieving this vision. We encourage all our clients for us to include a lighting consultant as part of the expert team for the project. This allows us to model the property at its exact location, orientation, and height for example so we can firstly establish the base lighting levels for each room and area. Ensuring a space is well lit sadly often overlooked, and within our level of detail, our lighting expertise extends to modelling the room with all the materials, their colours and textures to ensure we are acknowledging the depth of colour, degree of reflectivity. What will work in a space with taupe leather panelling for example, is entirely different to what suits a high gloss, dark timber space. Luxury is ultimately about an approach and attention to detail, and with regards to lighting this means establishing the multitude ambiences for the room. These can vary over the course of the day or for different scene settings - from day to day use to when you are having an intimate dinner. By using clever lighting controls, we set scenes associated with the four to eight light settings on the system. These can be controlled from an iPad or for our increasingly low tec clients, from a fitting on the walls.
A private residence designed by Elicyon, featuring Cameron Design House's Salo Elama
What are the upcoming trends for 2019?
Blackened Metals
In the last decade we have seen the preference in metal in interiors go from nickel, to rose gold, to polished brass and lastly to satin brass. I believe the next big trend will be blackened metal. It’s more rustic and works as a striking and sharp contrast to the light interiors that are very much in fashion at the moment. For example, an architectural blackened pewter frame on an ivory armchair is beautiful statement. Similarly, blackened brass trims to a piece of joinery in a weathered blond timber adds a bold twist.
Textured Stone
I believe polished marbles are about to be replaced with more tactile stone. Finishes such as honed, brushed, tumbled, flamed, leathered and sandblasted are slowly replacing the shiny polished look that we are used to seeing. I also think more tactile stone types such as limestone are gaining ground.
Foliage & Single Variety Flowers
The recent wild and hand-picked style of flower arrangements are being replaced with large bunches of foliage and/or single variety flowers. The idea is for them to look super casual rather than curated.
Beige
After years of grey being the on-trend colour in all of it’s shades, beige is gaining back ground. And not the safe greige kind – full on warm creamy beige. It takes a bit of getting used to but it adds a lovely warmth to an interior.
Blinds
I’m sensing that curtains are more and more being replaced with roman blinds. The idea is for the window treatment to take a back seat and not be the centre of the interior, instead to just naturally blend in and be beautifully constructed, sleek and practical. Heavy drapes, curtain ties and fabric pooling on the floor are all things of the past.
Rattan
Rattan is moving indoors with details added to armchairs, headboards and even tables.
Folk & Gypsy
Think Shaman motifs and gypsy inspired embroidery. This weaves an air of intrigue into the design concept, with some powerful symbology such as the eagle light from Klove Studio in their new collection launched at Dubai Design Week for example.
A private residence in London designed by Elicyon, featuring Cameron Design House's Salo Lunar
Cut glass crystal ware
A homage to the vintage and glamorous. Celebrated in contemporary crystal ware by some of the historic and modern glass houses, through new lines and collaborations with modern artists by Lalique, Lasvit and Baccarat to name a few.
Uneven edges to rugs, and rugs as artwork
Moving away from the formality and tradition of orthogonal rugs, rugs with deconstructed edges to bring a playful abstraction to a space are making their way into our projects. An abstracted non rigid edge creates opportunities for movement within a space and exploring how rugs define a room. We are creating bespoke rugs with incredible ‘artwork’ on them, whether in the form of pattern but more so in the multitude of material, weave, texture and interplay of all these with colour and edge.
Sheers & Nets
More and more of our projects have just sheer curtains, moving away from the formality of heavy or dress curtains. We are exploring exquisite fabrics for our sheers, with texture, interwoven detail and sheers with edge features.
Lime Green & Yellow
These two colours are emerging as a strong trend in our colour palettes – zesty, full of pigment and engaging, they are increasingly available in the new fabric ranges being released by the suppliers we work with.
Colour Blocking & bringing varying colours together
We are continuing to push our interest in how multiple colours and pigments come together in the context of the space they occupy. Colour is greatly influenced by the light that it reflects, so a site specific response is very relevant. Moving away from interiors with a single colour as the ‘pop’, we are bringing projects to life that interweave several colours with strong impact and personality together.
Ruffles, Borders & Fringes with a retro twist
Detail coming through in ruffles, borders and fringes with a 70’s revival as a theme, whether in the colour or the pattern on the borders.
Diffusion between fashion and interiors
Blurred boundaries between the worlds of fashion and interior design with fashion heavy weights moving into the interior design space. Recent examples are the Armani Casa flagship store on Sloane Street, the furniture and interior accessories lines by Louis Vuitton and developing furniture collections by Missoni and Bottega Veneta. This diffusion really comes alive with some of the recent collaborations marrying the two – Karl Lagerfeld x Christofle
A private residence in London designed by Elicyon, featuring Cameron Design House's Salo circular chandelier
What have you got planned over the next year?
Currently we are working on a very exciting new hospitality project, a boutique hotel in the heart of Sri-Lanka. A 30,000 sq ft penthouse apartment in Dubai on the prestigious One Palm - complete with roof terrace. In London, we continue to work on another stunning apartment at One Hyde Park. Completing the amalgamation of two properties in Chelsea - redesigning it’s interior into a contemporary family home. As well as a 5-bedroom apartment in Knightsbridge, in a beautiful listed building.
Discover more of Elicyon's beautiful work here ~ www.elicyon.com
