Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 51
Occupation: Architect.
Instagram: @reddymadedesign.
Hometown: Chennai, India.
Studio location: Greenwich Village, New York.
Describe what you make: Architecture, design, and creating meaningful spaces for living. We usually have everything from a fabric to a building and everything in between on the drawing boards.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: A prototypical Sensory Healing Room designed to affect the recovery rates of children coming out of comas.
Describe the problem your work solves: Uniting function, efficiency, and aesthetics, and finding the poetry in that intersection.
Describe the project you are working on now: Today we’re excited to launch our sculptural installation “X is for Love” in Times Square, commissioned by Times Square Arts with the Center of Architecture, on view through February 28th. It’s an installation that speaks to the power of love, and finding it at the intersection of difference and equality. And not forgetting the flowers while we do that!
Ongoing projects include our collaboration with the International Arts + Minds Lab at the Brain Sciences Institute at Johns Hopkins on the design of our sensory healing room, a house with an amazing view in Upstate New York, two townhouses on the Upper West Side, and the amenities for a luxury residential development in Sunny Isles Florida, Estates at Acqualina, among others.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: We have a very exciting project launching April 8th during Salone Del Mobile. Details to come soon—stay tuned! We’re excited to begin work shortly on a building in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that will house a nonprofit space on the ground floor that will serve the community with residential space above, as well as a house in Virginia based on our focus on neuroaesthetics.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: A sense of calm, my meditation space, Brian Eno’s “Neroli” playing in the background, and creative hum of collaboration coming from the studio.
What you do when you’re not working: I find as many of the amazing, talented, and funny people I am privileged to know and spend time with them. I read a lot: The Jazz of Physics by Stephon Alexander and Herman Hesse’s Fairy Tales are on deck right now.
Sources of creative envy: Louis Kahn, Luis Barragán, Lina Bo Bardi, Gerhard Richter, Brian Eno, and peonies that change color.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Loose ends that need to be tied up and take me away from creative thinking time.
Concrete or marble? Concrete.
High-rise or townhouse? Townhouse.
Remember or forget? Remember.
Aliens or ghosts? Aliens, of course.
Dark or light? Always light and more light.
