The name came to us on a cold evening in London, around February 2011. We were watching a contemporary Russian ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. That day was when we formalised the idea of having our very own design studio.

We moved to Ahmedabad from London in Dec 2011, and andblack operated from the guest room of our apartment for about 1.5 years before we moved into our current office. We used to cook lunch for the entire office at home back then. We moved into our current office on 13.05.2013 and further expanded in March 2019.

Ahmedabad was not an obvious choice. We settled on it after a lot of speculation. When we decided to move back to India, it was to start our practice. We were flourishing at Zaha Hadid and at Hopkins Architects, respectively. To leave our jobs for the struggle of starting our own firm was a tough decision. We needed it to be a fresh start — in a city we didn’t belong to, a city we could one day make our own. And so, Ahmedabad came to mind. We’ve been here ever since.

Black is not just a colour to us. It represents darkness, elegance, and humility. It’s open-ended; it’s complete and yet empty. Black is all about nothingness, and yet it absorbs everything. Black is strong, full of energy — both positive and negative. It’s modest but stylish. Black is universal in its application. Anyone can own it. Black gives you the space to make it yours.

It was Jwalant’s childhood dream to be an architect. Naturally, an extension of this dream was to start his own design practice. As a second-generation architect, Jwalant spent a lot of his free time as a child on construction sites, around carpenters and contractors. He knew the language of construction and design years before the formal education of architecture was introduced to him. Jwalant has been living his dream through andblack. It’s where his madness, motivation, and drive take shape.

Our logo was designed by illustrator and artist Hemant Kumar. A very dear friend, he was our batchmate from architecture school and our flatmate for 5 long years. His was the only name that came to mind when we thought of needing a logo. For us, this was homage to the dreams we had once dreamt together in our formative years and to the radical late-night conversations that have defined who we are today. Hemant is currently working as a product designer for GitHub in Seattle

A lesser-known fact about andblack is that we have got most of our projects from within the architecture community. This is something that we find amazing. It has instilled a great amount of reinforcement and responsibility in the firm and the work we do.

andblack has always been sure that it will design a solution for any design challenge that comes its way. In the world, it’s called a trans-disciplinary practice — but for us, it’s simply our love for design. All architects look for a language in their work. We, on the other hand, would find it a loss if we ever had to confine ourselves to a language. We would hate to be slaves of our own work. All we want is to ensure that the “design ka keeda” in us stays alive forever.

First architecture project: Eco Tourism Camp Site at Kevdi Forest, 2012

First Interior project: a jewellery showroom in Ahmedabad, 2012

First Installtion: we created a wooden foliage at CEPT, Ahmedabad, 2012
First international publication: our wooden foliage was featured on DesignBoom, 2012

First Indian publication: Home Review Mag, 2012.

Next, we were recognised in the Top 50 Architects by iGEN (Architects and Interiors India) in 2013.

Many think we call ourselves ‘andblack’ because we love the colour black. However, we never use pure black for anything. In all our creative endeavours, and in our design language, we either use 90% black or shades of grey. Similarly, we never use pure white — always shades of it. As they say, God is in the details.

Once part of the andblack office, any intern, fresher, architect, or designer becomes a part of the andblack family forever. As a firm, we celebrate this belonging with office lunches, parties, and trips. Since our inception, we have had over 100 architects and interns work with us, thanks to the high iteration rate in our industry. Our designer furniture is scattered all over our office, allowing our employees to belong to the design just as much as we belong to it.

In our journey, we have moved our office space twice temporarily, to renovate it. In our initial years, we once moved partly to our cousin’s office, ‘OPENIDEAS,’ and partly to CEPT while our apartment was getting painted. Back then, our team was much smaller. Recently, our entire office (a strength of 15 members) moved to ‘CONCCUBE,’ an office in our neighbouring building, for an entire month. We’ll be indebted to those who have helped us along the way for years to come.

andblack wasn’t our first choice for a name. There were many before it. One of the most prominent names that stayed with us for a long time was ‘SIFAR’ — which means zero in Arabic. It imbibed the concept of shunya more than the number itself and intrigued us immensely. Some other names that we considered were ‘Handmade,’ ‘Morph,’ and ‘Dot Design.’

Our inspirations often come from beyond design — music being one of them. On our last night in London, after an Indian Ocean concert, Jwalant told bassist Rahul Ram, “One day I want to do architecture the way you make music — blending Indian folk with western jazz.” That thought remains a defining philosophy behind andblack’s work.

Another source of inspiration for us is travel. A lot of our exposure has come through travelling, exploring various countries, and planning long road trips. When moving back to India, we travelled overland all the way from London to Ahmedabad, crossing over 15 countries in less than 3 months. For us, it’s more about the journey as opposed to the destination. In the same way, in our work, we invest a lot more in the design process than in yearning for a trendy and fancy final product. This philosophy makes the story — whether of travel or design — timeless and robust.

Art and appreciation have been integral to our lives. Exposure to art has influenced our design sensibilities immensely — more intangibly than we can imagine. From all the art events we visited internationally, to Kanika’s interest in art curation (for which she completed a course on Independent Art Curation from Central St. Martins in London), we have felt connected to expression through artforms ever since we’ve been in this field. As they say, an architect cannot be one if he cannot appreciate art — its forms, its political relevance, and its contextuality in time.

Kanika’s and Jwalant’s interests are diverse and unified in ways they don’t even realise. Jwalant has an immense love for photography and has gone to great lengths to do various photography projects back in the day. He has even won a few awards for his work in the past. One of his photographs was featured as an entire article in a leading photo-journal. Kanika, on the other hand, loves to write. She has a huge passion for expression through words. Kanika also has a few published articles up her sleeve. She continues to write to date, but her work remains mostly unpublished and unseen.

Our team believes the relationship between Kanika and Jwalant is the backbone of andblack. Jwalant is extremely ambitious, patient, serious, hardworking, and endearingly spontaneous. He pushes himself to his own limits, remaining unapologetically fearless about his ideas and his ways. Kanika, on the other hand, is a taskmaster and a power-packed manager. She is super organised in her head — a solid people’s person, for whom it’s like playing on home soil when it comes to projecting andblack to the outside world.

At andblack, scale is irrelevant. We approach every design problem with the same process-driven rigour — whether it’s a building, a lamp, or a trophy. This technique-based approach has allowed us to work seamlessly across disciplines, designing knobs, furniture, textiles, carpets, wallpapers, websites, and logos with the same comfort as bridges, factories, institutions, and interiors.