Anoushka: In the Space Between Sculpture and Use

When Anoushka describes her practice, she resists the simplicity of labels. “I am an Object and Experiential Designer,” she says. “I make pieces that live between art and function. They are things you can use, but also things that make you stop, wonder, and maybe even play a little.” That word “between” becomes the key to understanding her work. Each object is both tool and sculpture, both practical and poetic. A chair can be sat on, but it also carries narrative; a lamp can light a room, but it also recalls the intimacy of an embrace. The duality is deliberate.

Her earliest inspirations came from the rhythms of daily life. “I have always been intrigued by the everyday,” she reflects. “Everything around me serves as inspiration. I do not chase ideas. I let them come to me.” She describes herself as an introvert who often keeps her feelings under the surface, even identifying with the INTJ-T personality type on a personality test. Yet design became her outlet, the place where her inner life finds form. “That’s exactly when design comes in: the one place I truly let go. I let everything I feel, sense, hear, and understand guide my work. It is never predetermined, never the same twice.” For her, objects have always been expressive. “The things we surround ourselves with, the way we shape our environments, reveal so much about who we are.”

Anoushka’s academic background is as eclectic as her practice. She studied Interior Design, Botany, Chemistry, and Zoology, disciplines that, together, nurtured her fascination with living systems and her desire to create meaningful environments. “From a young age, I was both artistic and curious,” she says. “I realized early on how deeply environments and objects can affect living beings.” Encouraged by supportive parents who allowed her to explore freely, she began to merge the sciences with design. Her undergraduate thesis focused on creating safe and enriching spaces for pets, a project that sharpened her belief that furniture is never just functional. “That project taught me how furniture and objects are not just functional or aesthetic. They are expressions of identity and care.”

The conviction that design would become her life was not instantaneous but cumulative, cemented by a personal loss. “Losing my pet dog, who was like a sister and my closest companion, made me aware of how much our surroundings and the objects we live with affect our well-being. I realized I wanted to create environments and objects that nurture, support, and evoke emotion not just for humans, but for all living beings.”

Her philosophy is perhaps most clearly articulated in her description of her practice as “functional sculpture.” “I see function and art as inseparable,” she says. “They are two sides of the same experience. Every piece I create begins with curiosity and emotion, but I also consider how it will be used, interacted with, and lived in.” This philosophy crystallized in her postgraduate project Pause(,), a collection of three pieces paired with poems and emotions. Inspired by André Breton’s surrealist poetry, she allowed the work to emerge intuitively, resulting in forms that blurred the line between furniture and sculpture while remaining fully ergonomic. “My pieces were not what people would immediately accept as furniture, but that was the point. I reshaped those expectations.”

Materials play a central role in this balancing act. “Wood carries warmth and memory. It bends, it ages, it holds marks almost as if it is alive. Metal, while often seen as rigid and permanent, can be bent and reshaped to reveal delicacy and fragility. Ceramics constantly surprise me. Raw and imperfect at first, they transform completely through fire, carrying their own narrative of change.” For her, these materials do not simply serve form; they embody emotion. She recalls one piece built around the tension between loneliness and the need for a warm embrace. “I chose wood for its ability to hold warmth and familiarity, pairing it with metal cut, welded, and reshaped into a framework to reflect both the strength and fragility of that emotional state. Together, they created a dialogue between protection and vulnerability.”

The seed for new work often comes from passing moments. One of her recent pieces was inspired by the sight of a mother holding her child. “The intimacy of that moment, protective yet tender, inspired my design partner and me to create a sculptural lamp. We bent and reshaped glass to cradle the light within its form, so that when it glows, it does not just illuminate a space but radiates the warmth and emotion of that embrace.”

This is the sensibility that underpins her studio, Not So Square, which she describes as a space for rethinking norms. “The boundary I am most proud of reshaping is between furniture as just function and furniture as an experience.” Running her own practice allows her to experiment freely with form and narrative. “I do not actively seek clients. People come to me because they want to experience my designs. While commercialization is a part of it, my focus is on creating work that sparks curiosity, emotion, and reflection.” Her work is full of contradictions that never resolve but instead coexist. “I navigate those tensions by letting intuition and context guide me rather than forcing a balance,” she says. “I see these dualities not as opposites to be reconciled, but as layers to explore, letting the serious and playful, the strange and familiar, coexist.” That sense of productive disorientation is something she welcomes in her audience. “Unfamiliarity creates curiosity and invites exploration. It encourages people to pause, engage, and question what they are seeing. I hope that disorientation sparks reflection and conversation.”

Cultural context deepens her design language. Working in Mumbai, she learned to work within constraint and complexity, designing for warmth, adaptability, and community in compact spaces. “Homes and hospitality projects here often celebrate warmth, community, and adaptability, so my designs respond with forms that encourage gathering while still allowing for privacy.” Abroad, she adapts to different codes, where individuality and curated experience take precedence. “My role is to listen to those cultural codes and translate them into pieces that are both functional and evocative.” Yet she carries Mumbai’s imprint with her everywhere. “Growing up and designing in Mumbai, you learn to work within constraints. That tension taught me to see possibility in imperfection, to value adaptability, and to let design become a conversation rather than a fixed answer.”

Her home mirrors that belief in process over completion. “My personal space feels more like a living sketchbook than a finished composition. I am surrounded by completed designs, prototypes, sketches, ideas in progress, and objects that carry memory. Sometimes unfinished, sometimes imperfect, but always alive. My space is not divided into living and working. My home is also my studio, the place where I think, make, and push myself harder.”

If one emotion ties together her work, it is curiosity. “I want people to feel drawn in, to look a little closer, and to wonder about what they are seeing. When someone encounters my work, I like that moment of pause, that instant when they ask themselves: is this furniture or a sculpture?” She also points to the emotion she hopes her work ultimately leaves behind: wonder. “Wonder is not about shock or spectacle. It is a quiet, lingering feeling that invites attention and reflection. I want people to experience that subtle amazement that makes them pause or take a second look at something they thought they understood.”

Looking ahead, Anoushka is eager to push her practice into new terrain. “The boundary I am most eager to challenge next is how design can dictate or resist behaviours. I am interested in creating spaces and objects that do not just serve us, but subtly influence how we move, interact, or pause in them. I also want to explore temporal design, how a piece changes with time, light, use, or memory. Can furniture evolve in its story as it is touched, moved, or observed repeatedly?” If given the choice, she would place her work in spaces alive with everyday encounters. “Perhaps a library, a museum, or even a quiet public courtyard. I am drawn to environments where people move, pause, and engage, because my work comes alive in those moments of encounter.”

She envisions the future of functional art as a world where objects not only serve but also question, provoke, and evolve. “Furniture and everyday objects will become more than tools. They will act as collaborators in experience, shaping how we move, notice, and inhabit spaces. My voice in this movement is about design as a living, dynamic dialogue. I aim to create work that feels intentional yet unpredictable, pieces that shift meaning depending on context, time, or interaction. I want my work to occupy the in-between, where functionality meets poetry, where everyday life becomes experiential, and where imagination finds space to breathe.” See more of Anoushka's work here.

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