“More and more strange!” — design studio office Multitude of Sins (MOS) in the suburbs of Bangalore, India, can easily be described as a quote from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Dragons, ghosts, video games - everything here inspires its inhabitants to creativity without boundaries and unbridled experimentation.
“At MOS we pride ourselves on being quirky, eclectic, and a little crazy,” says Smita Thomas, founder and head designer of Multitude of Sins. “When it came to setting up our own studio, we were convinced that it should tell our story as it is. To be authentic, imbued with curiosity, and symbolic of the diversity of individuals who inhabit this space. Freed from the quintessential “design studio” image, we sought to create an honest space that satisfied our insatiable thirst for creativity, exploration, and imagination. This is our Utopia, a rabbit hole of the strange and mysterious, and we are all its sworn, sinful, Mad Hatters!”
The office, called Sin City (“Sin City”), is located in a former apartment. Now the area is 92 square meters. meter is divided into several zones: an open space with designer desks, a central area for discussions, a living room corner, a meeting room, two conference rooms and a storage room, which also works as a laboratory for samples and materials due to its size and abundance of daylight.
Many items were made to order or remained from previous projects and experiments of the studio, but were redesigned for new purposes. “This approach is sacred to us as we strive to minimize our impact on the environment in any way possible,” note Smita Thomas and her team, which includes Sachin Bhat, Rahul Naidu and Basavaraj.
The round table in the discussion area is made from scrap marble and its base is decorated with black beads. Modest IKEA chairs are enlivened by detailed embroidery in shades of turquoise and blue. Inspired by console video games, the desktops are covered in old white square tiles reminiscent of Super Mario levels. “We wanted the team to be able to get their hands (and tables) dirty and get creative on as many surfaces as possible.”
The spacious table in the room usually occupied by Smita Thomas (the designers call the room the "tigress's lair") is made of marble with granite inlay, giving it an elegant look. The contrasting detail is thick zigzag legs in dark green.
The studio designed the interior of its office in just 4.5 days. The designers characterize the resulting result as “organized chaos.” The light palette—white paint, white tiles, light gray floors—turned the space into a blank canvas on which bright colors and whimsical installations flourished, from the bright green carved frame of the front door to the interpretation of the “Vitruvian Man” in the study.
There are a lot of personal memories, experiences, ideas and self-irony here. Thus, one of the cartoon installations, “Stemets the Mushroom Man,” is named after the famous mycologist Paul Stamets and is dedicated to edible species of mushrooms. “We’d be millionaires if we had a coin for every time someone asked what substances we dabbled in while coming up with our designs,” joke the designers.
The abundance of humorous elements does not distract designers from thinking about what is important. For example, an installation in the form of a dragon named William above the work tables, created from recycled waste, reminds of ecology with the words Terra Fry (“The Earth is on fire”). The fiery breath of William, the studio's mascot, crosses the wall into a cobweb spreading across the ceiling, reminiscent of the creepy Upside Down from Stranger Things. The installation is intended to "remind us of the inevitable, ominous reality that awaits us on earth if we do not reconsider our acts of plunder in the name of progress."
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