In Punjab’s Mohali, Studio PALLAVI looks beyond chairs, tables and furniture with a pre-defined purpose. Founded by Srishti and Pamaljeet, the design practice draws from pre-colonial, floor-based furniture to explore not just the forms people lived with, but the way those forms shaped everyday life. “The Indian lifestyle was minimalistic—one object served multiple functions. But with consumerism, we began separating things for different functions. This habit is what we are trying to dismantle with our furniture,” says Srishti.
The studio’s pieces—mostly pedestals and platforms of varying heights and depths—deliberately resist labels. A piece can be a chair one moment and a table the next, depending on how its user chooses to inhabit it. “The furniture is unrestrictive; it doesn’t bind the user to use it in a certain way,” she says. The latest collection is crafted from North Indian rosewood, or sheesham, sourced from Punjab’s Malwa region. The century-old trees were seasoned for more than two years before being carved into furniture. There is a bodily logic to the work, too. The low heights encourage movement and engagement rather than locking the body into a prescribed posture. “Since the pieces are low-height, they make the entire body move and help posture. By sitting on a low-height piece, one is not caged in form,” Srishti explains.
At Studio PALLAVI, furniture becomes less about possession and more about participation—a quiet return to a South Asian design sensibility where less was not merely more, but more versatile.