Sorbet is a bathware discovery lounge in Southern Mumbai, conceived as an exercise in challenging conventions with a playful (and tasteful) irreverence. Reinterpreting the archetype of the bath solution experience centre, Sorbet subverts the expected in favour of an almost sensorial encounter.

Occupying a storied site formerly home to a revered rug atelier, the soaring 12-foot-high walls, generous proportions and porosity to the elongated street beyond are not just retained but exalted. The façade is a study in permeability – its skin an amalgam of fluted, clear and trellised glass, punctuated by a lime-hued cuboid. A shaded portico, canopied by a glass-brick trellis, cradles bursts of plum-hued foliage, while the earthy tactility of rubble-style Kota stone underfoot lends a grounding contrast.

Stepping inside, mint hues pervade – textured paints, Piccolo mosaic tessellations, candy-speckled terrazzo – interrupted only by levitating halos of bespoke luminaires and I-section stanchions lacquered in deep berry tones. Sightlines extend unimpeded across the rectilinear volume, rendering the entire store perceptible from any vantage. Services – HVAC ducts, conduits – remain exposed, their functional anatomy heightened by a marsala wash, that threads through the ceiling plane.

The floor is a convergence of smooth Kota expanses and jagged freeform inlays bound by ivory grout. The circulation diagram eschews rigidity, favouring a network of intersecting circles that carve out semi-open enclosures.

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These volumes become tactile arenas for engagement, their varying diameters and envelope heights fostering an interplay between enclosure and revelation. Additionally, the product display is orchestrated with the same poetic geometry – cloche-style pedestals, sweeping curved units and tiered formations echoing the perpetual language.

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Workplace design in India with Studio Saransh