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When Amaresh Anand’s daughter Krithi was six years old, she came to him with a design brief. An early reader with an interest in art, the precocious child wanted a piece of furniture that would be comfortable enough for her to indulge in her favourite hobbies. “She also wanted something cosy, something that she could feel wrapped up in,” Anand recalls, smiling at the memory. And so was born the Krithi single-seater sofa—an inventive reinterpretation of a classic single-seater with a softly curved enclosure that gives users a sense of womb-like comfort.
The word ‘Krithi’, by happy coincidence, translates into ‘creation’—and the single-seater led to the creation of Amaresh Anand Design, the architect’s eponymous experiential design studio, the first laboratory of which was his home. After eight years of experimenting with material, design, ergonomics and aesthetics, Anand discovered that, along with a fully furnished home, he had on his hands a complete collection. A Bangalore boy at heart, when the collection was complete, he approached local furniture brand Magari to collaborate on it. “Because Magari is also a homegrown, Bangalore company,” Anand says. It helped that the brand’s production values and sensibilities aligned with Anand’s—that it had a solid retail presence across the country was an added benefit.
Anand’s travels have given him a distinct local-meets-global sensibility that can best be seen in the arresting Hampi tables. The form distils the structure of the stone columns seen in the early 15th-century Hazara Rama temple in Hampi into gently rounded, wooden bases for the tables, which are then finished using Chennapatna lacquer, in a bright, eye-catching red. “I played with Chennapatna toys growing up, and got them for my kids when they were young,” Anand recalls warmly. The Hampi table channels this warmth into furniture that, along with being stylish and functional, is a playful homage to the architect’s home state.