Lotus Noir

Stepping away from the conventional is something Vikram Goyal does as a matter of course. His holiday home in Goa takes its cue from him.

- Mozez Singh

The predictable thing to do in an idyllic seaside refuge like Goa is to get lazy in mind, body, spirit and inspiration. Goan architecture and design is typically Portuguese baroque with strong influences and flourishes of Indian Mughal, neoclassical or Gothic revival styles imbued within it. It is, therefore, a convenient stimulus. The other kind of architecture prevalent in Goa is the now seemingly banal and bastardized resort architecture that was established in the 1700s and is especially characteristic of the sterility of spas and seaside resorts, with its origins on the German Baltic coast.

Balinese design sits at the apex of the pyramid that houses the all-pervasive and increasingly humdrum and irksome South Asian aesthetic. Additionally, in the last decade or so, the extreme gentrification of Goa (in itself a sort of reverse colonialism), by the rich and mighty of New Delhi and Mumbai, has led to the advent of mansions and villas that have appeared like gleaming white pustules on the soul of this former wonderland, to which people came to plummet into a rabbit hole of anonymous decadence and a transcendental sleep under a galaxy of shooting stars.

HOME DRAMA

These then are the ubiquitous design influences of Goa, to which product and interior designer, Ayurvedic kingpin, and ever-evolving aesthete Vikram Goyal seems to have flipped the bird when he and award-winning Goan architect Tallulah D’Silva built his sensational new home, all 8,000 square feet of it, on a verdant hill in Moira—one of Goa’s quietest and most desirable villages.