Take a long look at snapshots from the actor’s new bachelor pad in the city
DNA (August 3, 2016)


The home has a bachelor pad-meets-family home aesthetic. In the den adjoining the living room, for example, there’s a foosball table, a billiards table and a vending machine that dispenses chocolates. It has the actor’s work desk spilling over with bound scripts and books on moviemaking but also life-size graffiti by Daku—who Shah calls the Banksy of India—on a wall where movies are projected on weekends. The all-white bar in the far corner of the living room might spell ‘bachelor pad’ but taking pride of place right beside it is a moveable wall grid with portraits shot by Bharat Sikka of Roshan and and his sons Hrehaan (10) and Hridhaan (8) in all kinds of costumes. Architect Ashiesh Shah, who has designed the star’s home talks about the thought behind it, what the actor wanted and the quriky things in the house.

What was your design brief?
Hrithik called me and said he’d seen Katrina Kaif’s new home in Bandra (which I’d done) and loved it. He said he wanted that vibe too. I got to work. We went about part by part, we did a few changes, we reoriented a few things and then we started working on the lifestyle aspect… How he would actually live in the space.

How he would live in the space with his children?
Exactly. We needed the space to function differently at different times… to go from bachelor pad to family home. So when the children are not around he could use it to entertain friends and when the kids are around it becomes a family home. So it had to function as a fully-equipped home but still have that independent bachelor studio feel. To balance that, we needed to work on lending a duality to the space. That’s why we have a lot of moveable elements. So you can pull down the screen in the den when you want to watch a movie and at other times, it’s a graffiti wall.

How does the space transform?
It has automations which have been designed to suit different moods. For example, it has lighting at different levels. From the ground-level lighting to the mid-level. I prefer during evenings to keep it lit at a ground-level zone.

There are these funny and philosophical quotes spread around the house, whose idea was this?
All Hrithik’s! He is a poetic soul. Many have even been written by him. I got my studio staff to work on creating these custom pieces. We put quotes in frames, on hidden corners of the wall, on pebbles in the terrace-garden… we kind of played around to give it meaning and personalise it. Also, we made his family photographs a moveable wall grid, so you can keep adding or subtracting from it.

Where was majority of the furniture shopping?
We made a couple of expeditions to Dubai to stores like Aati, Nautica and The One for the large furniture pieces. And many others were bought from his former sister-in-law’s home store, Simone, and stores such as Bungalow 8, Good Earth and Le Mill. The souvenirs and smaller accent pieces are from his travels, like the exquisite driftwood-and-acrylic stools from the French brand Bleu Nature or the delicate corals.

Tell us about a Hrithik quirk…
He loves to pick up curios on his travel. The boys’ bathroom is entirely done up with things he picked up on holiday in Maldives. He’s also really into his gizmos.

Was Hrithik a tough client?
Hrithik is not about the brand. He is about the aesthetic. If he likes the aesthetic, if he thinks it fits in the moodboard, he’s all green. He knew exactly what he wanted so it was easy to work with him: clean, masculine, structured. He was also very proactive and would send us emails 24/7, often attaching references of things he’d seen and liked.