Art Deco Villa in New Delhi Becomes Vikram Goyal's Design Testament

Twelve-foot ceilings, almost unheard of in Delhi, anchor the Art Deco villa that furniture designer Vikram Goyal now calls home. The three-story stucco house sits in a green quarter established in the early 1950s, wedged between the Old Fort and Humayun's Tomb, inside the axial grid laid out by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

Goyal, creative director of Vikram Goyal Studio and the lifestyle brand Viya, came to the property a few years ago. The neighborhood drew him back to his childhood enclave. "It's central, but it's not part of the hullabaloo," Goyal says. "I value serenity and quiet."

What did the house demand from a designer?

Goyal limited his structural interventions to essential repairs, enlarging only the kitchen and one of two dining rooms. The house itself set the tone. The entry staircase, with clef-shaped railings and steps paved in matcha-colored terrazzo, stopped him on his first visit.

"When I walked up the stairs the first time, I was like, 'My gosh! I try to be bold with my interiors, but I couldn't have imagined this,'" he says.

He amplified that inherited glamour by outlining the walls and windows in jet-black molding, a tuxedo-piping effect that frames the rooms. The furnishings then carried the narrative. The red-lacquered dining room pairs his candlesticks with walls paved in Gujarati mirrors — an effect he admits may read as more Venetian than Indian. "But that's not such a bad thing," he says.

A second dining room holds his Garden of Life wall panels, a collaboration with de Gournay, depicting animals along the Silk Road in gold and bronze. The palette repeats in the cast-bronze table base and in repoussé accessories from Viya.

How does a family inheritance shape the interior?

Ten chairs from Goyal's grandfather anchor the second dining room. The set riffs on English Arts and Crafts, Viennese Secession, and chinoiserie, with a shadowy provenance. "Various people who came to the family house in Jaipur would look at them and say, 'Wow, they look like Charles Rennie Mackintosh,'" he remembers. "And we, of course, had no idea who Mackintosh was."

The ten chairs would not divide evenly among the relatives who wanted them, so the family commissioned copies. Goyal had his seats re-covered in yellow silk brocade, loomed in Benares by weavers who serve the Bhutanese royal family. The same artisans produced the emerald brocades in the living room, a telescoping run of spaces where vintage carpets and works by Jamini Roy, Dayanita Singh, and M.F. Husain hang.

The most poignant pieces are a suite of Pichwai textile paintings from his grandfather — devotional works that mirror his lifelong affection for the animal kingdom.

What comes next for Goyal?

Last month in London, Goyal debuted a new collection of furniture, wall panels, and objects: monkey-themed brocades, turtle-patterned carpets, and jasmine-adorned vessels inspired by the Ramayana, a saga of loyalty, friendship, and sacrifice.

"I'm doing a lot of Indian storytelling these days," Goyal says. The villa argues he always has — and that his next chapter will keep the craftspeople of Benares, and the Deco bones of a 1950s Delhi house, firmly in the frame.