Why Rajiv Saini is in the Design 100

Rajiv Saini set up his Mumbai studio in 1995 — trained as a computer sciences engineer rather than a designer, a background that may explain the practice’s methodical approach to a brief. Over three decades, Rajiv Saini and Associates has built its reputation on spatial purity: restrained, luxurious material palettes and a subtle textural tactility that reads as considered rather than decorative. Early hospitality work, including the Devigarh Hotel in Udaipur and the Marriott Goa, established that vocabulary; residential commissions across India, Dubai, Thailand and Europe have extended it since.

That consistency has been recognised three times over by the Elle Decor International Design Award, following earlier recognition from Wallpaper magazine as one of its Top Five International Design Talents. What holds the work together is restraint applied with confidence — an approach that has become a reference point for what contemporary Indian minimalism looks like, without leaning on regional cliché to make the case.