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How Luxurious Can Luxury Be?
December 27, 2022
What does luxury mean in the Indian context? Can luxury be affordable at the same time? Does luxury have different connotations for different people? What role does technology play in the luxury kitchen? What is the way forward for luxury in the kitchen? The panellists discuss at length all these issues and examine how luxury has evolved over time.
A panel discussion on how luxurious an Indian kitchen can be was held as part of the Design Dialogues, Bengaluru with Sheital Shetty, Editor & Publisher, Kitchen Ideas as the moderator. The panellists in the discussion were Lipika Sud, Founder Director, Lipika Sud Interiors Pvt Ltd; Ponny Concessao, Principal Architect, Oscar & Ponni Architects; Behzad Kharas, Director, BNK Group and Smitha Zachariah, Founder, SZ Design.
The onus of selecting the technology that will work and suit the client’s requirements lies with the architects and interior designers. Therefore, doing a little bit of research is essential.
Sheital Shetty
Editor & Publisher
Kitchen Ideas
The variable connotation of luxury
Luxury has a lot of aspirational values attached to it and the definition of luxury varies from person to person. Luxury is about the experience, the touch and feel of the finishes, the different colours that come out of the shower and the overall ambience of the space.
Sheital Shetty, Editor & Publisher, Kitchen Ideas opined, “Technology is enabling such phenomenon and the selection of the right technology is important. Nowadays, people are very well read and thanks to the internet are well aware of the technologies, innovation and products that are available.”
Ponny Concessao, Principal Architect, Oscar & Ponni Architects opined, “Luxury is something of a statement! It is indeed very individualistic because the definition of luxury itself is different. It means a different scale, different specifications, and different experience in itself and there is a price tag of affordability attached to it.”
She further elaborated, “There are different levels of luxury. Today, even middle-class client is looking for some expression of luxury. So it varies on different levels and different budgets. I am firm believer that you can use inexpensive materials and still give an illusion of luxury.”
Indians are actually very luxurious in terms of their thoughts in their minds. Look at the lavish wedding in India. There is always an element of luxury in everybody in India. Be it in the lower class, be it at middle class or upper class, there is luxury at every stage.
Lipika Sud
Founder Director
Lipika Sud Interiors Pvt Ltd
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Lipika Sud, Founder Director, Lipika Sud Interiors Pvt Ltd opined, “Indians are actually very luxurious in terms of their thoughts in their minds. Look at the lavish wedding in India. There is always an element of luxury in everybody in India. Be it at the lower class, be it at middle class or the upper class, there is luxury at every stage.”
Talking about the evolving pattern of luxury, Sud added, “Speaking from my experience, the concept of luxury has completely changed today, compared to what was perceived as luxury say some 15 years back. For example, we did a project 15 years ago wherein the client wanted everything imported. The brief was that it must give the feel of being wealthy, everyone walking into the house must be impressed with the opulence and every piece must look wow. The budget was not a constraint. So, we used beautiful Victorian furniture, frames imported from around the world, chandeliers imported from Belgium, and imported sanitaryware. The client was also actively involved with the process and it turned out to be very beautiful.”
She continued, “A year back, his son, who is about 27-28 years old, wanted to renovate a part of the house – an area spanning about 10,000 sqft of the 20,000 sqft house. Unlike his father, his brief was “Take it all away! I want everything in white, white floors, white walls, very large windows, I want air to come in, I want to look at nature, I do not want chandeliers, I want large paintings and I want as less furniture as possible.” So, luxury is not the same as it was earlier, in the same Indian family. “So the meaning of luxury is different for different people even within the same family,” opined Sud.
Luxury is something of a statement! It is indeed very individualistic because the definition of luxury itself is different. It means a different scale, different specifications, and different experience in itself and there is a price tag of affordability attached to it.
Ponny Concessao
Principal Architect
Oscar & Ponni Architects
Materials and Technology
Luxury is the synergy of materials and technology. “We, as architects, rely so much on vendors so we need to understand the technology behind all of it to advise the client what works and what doesn’t; because the options are limitless. And, it is very important to understand the client’s brief as well. And so that is in effect itself is an exercise and that is something that the architects need to take cognizance of, the options that are available and the brief and to top it all to create a ‘wow’ factor. We are hired because we need to give them the right kind of functionality to operate, to experience the ‘wow’ factor and also to create a statement,” added Concessao.
Shetty added, “However, the onus of selecting the technology that will work and suit the client’s requirement lies with the architects and interior designers. Therefore, doing a little bit of research is essential.”
Talking about luxury in Kitchen Concessao added, “Typically the kitchens in such luxury homes have 2 segments – a wet kitchen with a regular heavy duty cuisine and a dry kitchen which ends up being a place where light breakfast or snacks etc is served. It is a typical American formula which has picked up well in India.”
She continued, “So, the luxury element is focused mainly on the dry kitchen. The finishes are simply exquisite - Italian marble, heavy PU-veneer finished cabinet work, fantastic woodwork in terms of loose furniture, chandeliers, stone in the dining area, and soft furnishing around the dining area overlooking the dry kitchen. So it basically becomes a showpiece for its owner to show off to his relatives and on an average, this takes about 1000 sq. ft. of area.”
I think luxury is the word that defines the sensory experience of alleviated wellbeing. So, whenever or whatever gives me an alleviated sense of wellbeing is a luxury for me.
Behzad Kharas
Director
BNK Group
It is really a redefining of luxury in kitchen areas. And these days we have many Italian, Swedish and Scandinavian manufacturers who come in and drew up this kitchen and help us designers create absolutely fantastic environment for the kitchen areas.
According to Smitha Zachariah, Founder, SZ Design, luxury is about attention to detail. It is about the assortment of smaller things in a kitchen that makes a difference. These are the things that create the impression of luxury in kitchens.
“Luxury in the kitchen is basically about functionality first. Then comes the aesthetic appeal in terms of finishes, making the cabinetry look nice, making sure the lighting works in the context of the space etc. But, I think in kitchens top priority is functionality and making sure the material work,” shared Zachariah.
She further added, “Clients mostly want a concept whether it is a technology, whether it is the appliances, the flooring, the countertop or any other elements in a kitchen. It is about putting it in a particular context and almost creating a set for them to sort of enjoy it. So it is about bringing all these elements together and really making it stylish, making it glamourous and making it work and also being functional at the same time.”
Behzad Kharas, Director, BNK opined, “I think luxury is the word that defines the sensory experience of alleviated wellbeing. So, whenever or whatever that gives me an alleviated sense of well-being is luxury for me.”
He further added, “When we associate ourselves with luxury products, it is a statement that one is trying to make. So what happens majorly and the only slight difference that we have in India is the quality of workmanship. So while the shutters are made offsite following a certain process in a certain factory in certain conditions eventually it comes down to the Indian site where it is manhandled either while it is being made and before the opening there are scratches or probably the shutter is hanging loose because the hinge which is not fitted properly and in Indian kitchens lot of clients spend a lot of money in making kitchens and ensuring that ‘we want drawers there, we want cabinets here and we want this to open on touch and we want this to be automated’ or whatever.”
Luxury in the kitchen is basically about functionality first. Then comes the aesthetic appeal in terms of finishes, making the cabinetry look nice, making sure the lighting works in the context of the space etc. But, I think in kitchens top priority is functionality and making sure the material work.
Smitha Zachariah
Founder
SZ Design
Talking about the importance of services, Kharas added, “The kitchens are used by the servants who handle things in the most obnoxious ways. So servicing these high-frequency zones of where you are basically opening the cabinet at a very high frequency or using the drawers, they tend to dump things into a drawer and so if a channel has a certain bearing capacity so they overload as much they can so this constant maintenance issues always come up. And, this is a problem across different price segments be it a kitchen worth a crore or worth Rs 5 lakh.”
And as time has progressed and obviously now that we have the exposure to all the brands, across the globe, which are available here, a very big emphasis in terms of planning of washrooms and kitchens has now come in the use of technology in a very big way.
“In the future, I see automation coming in a big way in kitchens. I have seen case studies of kitchens which are fully automated where you set a time say at 7’o clock in the morning your coffee is filtered. You will have robotic kitchens where will have a pre-set menu where they can even flip an omelette for you at a predefined time. You can have something already put in the microwave at a certain time and it will heat it up and keep it ready. So you will see a lot of use of these technologies which affects a person in terms of accessibility in terms of ease of using a kitchen,” shared Kharas.
[This panel discussion was a part of Design Dialogues 2017 held in JW Marriott, Bengaluru]
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