Why Shalini Misra is in the Design 100

Shalini Misra trained as an architect in Delhi before continuing her studies in urban planning at Columbia University in New York, and has run her London studio since the mid-1990s. That itinerant education set the pattern for a practice whose reach now spans London, New York and Dubai — taking in a Manhattan apartment the New York Times profiled as a “love letter to the sky” and a widely published farmhouse near New Delhi.

The work reads as gathered rather than styled: rooms built around collected art and bespoke commissions from a global network of makers, extending even into aviation interiors. That cross-cultural instinct found a formal outlet in 2022 with Curio Space, her platform for collectible design, and in 2024 with the Shakti Design Residency, pairing Indian artisans with international designers at Milan’s Alcova. It is this ability to move between London and a wider, craft-led world without losing coherence that earns Misra her place in the Design 100.