Design Plurality – The Doshi Levien Universe

Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien met as design students at London’s Royal College of Art in 1995. Nipa, who was born in Mumbai and raised in Delhi, recalls being shaped by an appreciation for modernist design ideals and the importance of craft, while Jonathan, who was trained in fine cabinetmaking and industrial design, spent much of his childhood learning how things are made in his family’s factory in Scotland. Though somewhat opposing, this plurality of influences and cultural experiences proved a great force. Today, their celebrated studio Doshi Levien (whose work for Kettal and Moroso is exclusively available in Australia through Mobilia) is defined by a hybridised mindset bringing technology, handcraft and industrial techniques to the fore across furniture, textiles and product design. Recently in Australia as a keynote speaker of Sydney Design Week, Nipa shared her thoughts on the Doshi Levien universe – from her and Jonathan’s contrasting yet complementary creative attitudes to life in London’s Barbican Centre and their bustling Columbia Road studio.

“There’s no point for two people who are alike to work together,” Nipa says. “Jonathan laughs about this, but I think the reason I fell in love with him is because he’s a maker, and I have this immense respect for somebody who knows how to make something.” Building models and working materials with his hands are his strong suit, and “he isn’t afraid of any material”. The defining curve of the Cala Armchair for Kettal, for example, is the result of Jonathan tinkering with bent wire. Nipa, on the other hand, finds her stride working in 2D – sketching and drawing to refine and resolve ideas. Nipa describes their relationship as fluid with a healthy and constructive tension, saying “a lot of it is interpreting – and then misinterpreting – what the other person is doing.” She adds, “and of course, there’s a little bit of competition between us.” It is a highly complementary creative partnership, one that fuses Nipa and Jonathan’s contrasting aptitudes, challenging the confines of production and design to create unexpected and exciting outcomes.

“Jonathan laughs about this, but I think the reason I fell in love with him is because he’s a maker and I have this immense respect for somebody who knows how to make something,” Nipa says.

Over the course of their shared lives and careers, the pair have “created a universe” for themselves in London. Their studio of 14 years is a former 19th-century furniture workshop on Columbia Road in the East End, where their small team makes models, sketches and mixes colours across the studio, colour lab and gallery space. There is a restaurant below and a school next door; the famous flower market occurs every Sunday; and the pair live with their son in the nearby Barbican Centre – the 40-year-old estate in Central London renowned for its bold brutalist design and utopia-like identity. Of living in an architectural icon, Nipa says, “once you move in, you never want to move out because you feel so attached and proud. There are private residents’ gardens, the big lake in the middle, the theatre with incredible productions, the art gallery and concert hall – it’s a very special place.”

Given Nipa and Jonathan’s diverse upbringings and propensities, it is unsurprising to see cross-cultural perspectives continually emerge in their work. One of their earliest commissions – a range of cookware for Tefal – served as a manifesto in their formative years. “We wanted to bring different worlds together in our work – not as an aesthetic language but more as a philosophical approach and a way to consider globalisation as a positive process of the exchange of cultures, values, materials and production methods,” Nipa reflects. The collection, which received widespread press and helped to set the course for the budding studio, comprised cookware designed for the culinary techniques specific to the respective cultures of China, India, Spain, Morocco and more, eschewing a ‘one size fits all’ approach and encouraging cultural multiplicity in mainstream industrial design.

“We wanted to bring different worlds together in our work – not as an aesthetic language but more as a philosophical approach and a way to consider globalisation as a positive process of the exchange of cultures, values, materials and production methods,” Nipa reflects.

This cross-cultural lens has become an unwavering undertone of the studio’s approach for the past two decades, guiding their work for Cappellini, HAY, Kettal, nanimarquina, B&B Italia and more. The Charpoy daybed created for Moroso in 2007 remains a landmark project for the duo, who had just been named Best Breakthrough Designers by Wallpaper Magazine, consequently catching the eye of Moroso’s influential art director Patrizia Moroso. Of working with the Italian powerhouse for the first time, Nipa says, “it really was our entry into the world of European design,” adding, “our work was very expressive – it had a point of a view and an underlying philosophy and approach, so I think we needed to be in this world of what I call high design.”

The daybed – which launched at Salone del Mobile to much acclaim – features a mattress with motifs hand-embroidered in Nipa’s aunt’s workshop in India, sitting atop a wooden base crafted in a woodworking factory near Moroso’s headquarters in Udine. As a piece of furniture, it combined the “hand craftsmanship of India with the industrial craftsmanship of Italy” and represented a “symbiotic relationship between industry and designers,” Nipa reflects.

Alongside cultural influences, logic is deeply rooted in Doshi Levien’s identity. As Nipa once notably said, “I don’t do flowers”. Her mathematical mind means she leans heavily into designing with reason and rationale rather than purely with aesthetics. “For me, pattern has to have logic and you can see that in the Charpoy where the pattern relates to the motif – it’s not just a motif, it’s a game, and there’s a reason why it’s a game.” This approach to pattern and geometry is also beautifully articulated in their Object of Devotion Daybed for the Paris Galerie Kreo, which depicts an interplay of expertly balanced yet seemingly abstract images. It is, in fact, a collection of visual nods to Chandigarh – the Indian city famously planned by Le Corbusier, emblematic of modernism and a source of much inspiration for Nipa. Similarly, the Paper Planes armchair for Moroso originated from a fabric design based around graph paper which responds directly to the angular form of the chair. This consideration for logic matched with the Doshi Levien appreciation for craft results in creations which carry immense meaning and beauty; it is an entirely holistic approach to product design that yields clever, thought-provoking outcomes.

Much like the foundations of Nipa and Jonathan’s partnership, the plurality of the Doshi Levien portfolio is significant. It is rich, not solely because of the pair’s wide-reaching strengths in the field of design, from colour and textiles to form and structure but because there is a generous dose of each of them in every project. It is their contrasting cultural experiences and creative attitudes – evidently magnetic from their very first encounter – which imbue the Doshi Levien universe with endless eloquence and joy.

Mobilia is the exclusive Australian stockist of Moroso and Kettal.