Aarav Mehta
Founder, Principal Designer — since 2018
Trained as an architect, spent six years on site before opening the studio. Draws every joinery detail in the practice by hand at least once before it is modelled.
Studio — The practice
We design
spaces that feel
like home.
Fourteen people, two studios, forty-two completed interiors. Small enough that the person who draws your project is the person who stands on its site.
Forma Studio is a design practice focused on creating timeless and thoughtful interiors.
We were founded in 2018 around a straightforward conviction: that the quality of a space is decided long before anyone chooses a fabric. Our work runs from private houses to hotels, and in every case begins with the plan, the light and the way a day actually moves through a room.
Studio
Fourteen people across Mumbai and Bengaluru — designers, technologists and one full-time model maker.
Approach
Plan first, surface last. We resolve the spatial problem before anything is selected, specified or styled.
Craft
We work with a standing group of makers — joiners, masons, weavers, metalworkers — many of them for the full eight years.
Collaboration
Clients are in the room for the difficult decisions rather than presented with a resolved answer at the end.
Philosophy
Less, but better considered.
Five ideas hold the practice together. Open any of them.
Before anything is chosen, the plan is argued over. Most problems that look like decoration problems are plan problems that were never solved.
We map daylight across a full year before placing a single fitting. Artificial light is designed to finish what the sun leaves undone, not to replace it.
We prefer materials that record time — lime, stone, unlacquered metal, oiled timber. A surface that improves with handling is worth more than one that resists it.
Height, depth and the distance between things are set on a single dimensional system, so that a room feels resolved even when nothing in it announces itself.
A beautiful room that is difficult to live in has failed. Storage, service, acoustics and maintenance are designed first and hidden last.
Craft
We keep the makers close
Joiners, masons, weavers, metalworkers and one ceramicist — many of them with us for the full eight years. Where a detail is unusual, it gets mocked up before it gets specified.
Index
2018
Studio founded
42
Projects delivered
11
Cities
08
Years
Demo figures — sample content
People
Fourteen people, two studios
Four of them here. Demo profiles written for this build.
Ishita Rao
Design Director — since 2019
Leads the residential portfolio. Responsible for the studio’s material library, and for the rule that no sample enters it without a maintenance note attached.
Kabir Nair
Associate, Hospitality — since 2021
Came from restaurant operations before design, which is why our hospitality plans tend to survive contact with a real service.
Meera Iyer
Senior Designer, Detailing — since 2020
Runs technical documentation and site coordination. Keeps the studio’s standing library of 340 tested junction details.
In their words
“Forma transformed our home into something we never imagined possible.”
Sample content — fictional client quotes
Have a spacein mind?
Let’s create it.