A gentle touch
Identity|March 2021
Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary are the duo behind soft-geometry, a design studio based between California and Kochi, India. The duo is creating artful furniture and home objects that are full of quirks and humour, driven by traditional Indian craftsmanship that’s reminiscent of their childhoods.
AIDAN IMANOVA
A gentle touch

What inspired you to start soft-geometry?

Utharaa Zacharias (UZ): Each other. Our working relationship, that was centred around design and later friendship, was the foundation for our experiments. We tried to understand what made our collaboration work, who we are together and what we wanted to be doing. The dialogue and process was always interesting, and soft geometry was born as a medium for this continued exploration between us as partners – a medium [that’s] reflective of our intricate, unique quirks and evolving philosophies.

How would you describe the pieces you create?

UZ: Everything we design is expressive of us and ‘soft’ is how we would describe us - our personalities - if that makes sense. As an extension of that, ‘soft’ is what we aspire to in our products, our work, and everything we touch. We think of ‘softness’ as slowness, intimacy, humour, humility, kindness and a quiet sort of courage and strength to be different and true, even if it is sometimes awkward or strange. It may be hard to view all of this in objects, but the hope is that you still feel it, a softness within geometries, hence the name.

How does the context of India influence your design language?

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