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DNA (September 6, 2014)

Enlarge ImageShah Rukh Khan’s home has always been something of a mystery to most people. You must’ve often wondered how big it is, how it looks from the inside? Who designed it? Does it have a walk-in closet or a pool or a gym or a study? And he’s also got an office on the premises! Read on for everything you wanted to know about Mannat.

Five bedrooms
The 1920s-era Grade III heritage structure unfurls in every direction — skywards, backwards and sideways. Gauri and Shah Rukh’s home has within it five bedrooms, multiple living areas, a gymnasium, library, and almost anything else a celebrity family needs to be content.

6,000 sq ft of luxury!
The architects of Mannat are Mumbai-based firm, Faquih and Associates, headed by architect Kaif Faquih. The team began with the 6,000 sq ft bungalow. They then built an annexe attached via a light-filled box that Faquih refers to as the ‘intervention space’, on which rest the family’s private apartments. “When we got it, the interiors were classical, like any large bungalow. We reconceived the layout so that you go through four spaces in sequence, but we kept some of the original embellishments,” he says. A classical bungalow, Gauri’s vision takes over the moment you open the door. The setting is dramatically backlit and moody—the aesthetics part-contemporary Gothic, part ironic. The palette is dark, with seemingly unfinished surfaces.

Enlarge ImageFour years in the making
Gauri, who styled the interiors, says the effort was intensive and eye-opening. “It took years of sourcing, travelling and editing to get to the point where everything looked just right,” she says. In fact, the four years she spent devising Mannat’s interiors turned the once stay-at-home celebrity mother-of-three into interior designer.

Home is where the heart is!
Perhaps as a counterbalance to the styled living spaces, Gauri has maintained the private areas quite simply, outfitting them with practical furniture that sits among masses of books, board games and pictures of extended family. The bedrooms are quite small and surprisingly manageable—much more than those imagined by the actor’s fans.

Says Gauri, “When you live in a house, big or small, you don’t think of it in terms of being famous or anything like that. You just think of it as home. I want my children to make their lives here and I don’t intend to change it for a long time.”