Swooning over Alia Bhatt and Sonakshi Sinha’s bachelorette pads on Insta right now? And Ranbir Kapoor, Neetu Kapoor and Sunidhi Chauhan’s homes? Add to that the offices of director Gauri Shinde and R Balki as well as a few cafés in B-town. The man behind all these, and more, is Rupin Suchak, art director by profession and interior designer by passion.
“It’s been a superb experience working with these stars and analysing the way they approach their personal spaces. It makes me study each of their characters off screen so that I can execute and bring in their real self into their spaces,” he explains.
Design, he believes, is a constant process of evolution, improvisation and alteration of plans as and when required. That is what results in fine design. “But I always keep my signature style unaltered. There must be a striking element in every space I create, something that is a DIY. That is my way of doing interiors because a human touch is important to my spaces. This could be anything from murals, restored furniture units, recycled art pieces, commissioned artefacts and use of materials that heavily rely on sustainable design,” he adds.
As for design trends for this year onwards, Suchak advises homemakers to try a mix of textiles, prints and geometrics to get a character-driven space. Exposed and natural textures will be the highlight, he says. “Explore natural material to use on the floors. There are various natural stones, both cost-effective as well as rare, and a clever use of that can redefine interior decor,” he adds.
Suchak also stresses the need to incorporate as many greens as possible in a space to add life to the concrete blocks that we live in. Also, do not use a single type of lighting in the house. “One can very easily explore the wholesale markets and bring more vibes to their spaces with some fantastic scope of mixed mood lighting for various occasions,” he explains.
A graduate from NIFT, New Delhi, Suchak joined noted production designer Sabu Cyril right after college and did a four-year professional training stint under his mentorship. Then, having worked on films such as Ra.One and Krrish 3, he started executing futuristic cinema. “Films such as Agneepath and Jai Ho gave me an overall idea of how we stylise realistic worlds. I explored further as an independent production designer with some brain-cracking concepts such as Ki & Ka, Dear Zindagi, Padman and super stylised psycho-thriller Spyder. Fortunately, having worked with the biggest names in the film industry, I managed to absorb much from them,” he adds.
Besides all this, Suchak also works in installation art. “I live for creating organic art pieces subject to a theme or a story. It is a matter of how I have trained my mind to think of twisted design ideas and executing them. It mostly has a heavy graphic visual language attached to the art piece and my profession as a production designer has in turn opened an entire new dimension to add to my ideas,” he signs off.