Chirag Design Studio turns Odisha's temple architecture into modern luxury (interview)

A Bhubaneswar architect's answer to imported luxury vocabularies: an identity unmistakably rooted in Odisha yet fully relevant to the present, where exclusivity means craftsmanship and provenance rather than imported labels.

Take Kalinga architecture's proportions, geometry, stonework and craft — not its ornament — and translate them into contemporary homes and public buildings.

A monumental central staircase hand-carved from a single sandstone block by a sculptor at Gyanaranjan Villa; Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra palette distilled into Ripul's Lounge; hand-carved sandstone beside modern furniture, Ikat detailing in upholstery, and the same vocabulary scaled up in the Babasaheb Ambedkar Bhubaneswar Bus Terminal.

A named movement with executed private and public work; the interview publishes no commercial metrics — the case is the vocabulary itself and its adoption beyond residences into public architecture.

In an exclusive interview with TheGlitz editor-in-chief Sumita Chakraborty published 6 October 2026, architect Chirag U Swain, founder of Bhubaneswar's Chirag Design Studio, describes Neo-Kalinga Architecture: understanding the core principles of Odisha's Kalinga architectural tradition — form, scale, proportions, colours, geometry, stonework, indigenous materials and cultural memory — and translating them for the way people live today. He says the movement came from spotting a space between two failed options: preserving heritage untouched, or reproducing it literally.

The executed work is specific, as Swain describes it: at Gyanaranjan Villa in Bhubaneswar, a monumental central staircase was sculpted from a single sandstone block by a craftsman rather than assembled by a mason; at Ripul's Lounge, the electric palette and rhythm of Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra festival were distilled into a contemporary entertainment space. Inside the homes, hand-carved sandstone centre tables sit beside clean modern sofas and Ikat patterns reappear as refined upholstery detailing — rooted, he says, but never overly literal.

Swain says the vocabulary has travelled beyond private residences into public architecture, including the Babasaheb Ambedkar Bhubaneswar Bus Terminal, with Nandankanan Zoo and the Harekrushna Mahtab State Library further expanding the canvas. His argument, as he puts it in the interview: the future of Indian design need not become less Indian to become more global — provenance, craftsmanship and the human hand are the real luxuries, not imported marble.

The interview is framed by TheGlitz as the statement of a design movement rather than a single project; it publishes no dates for the individual projects and no commercial results, so the record here rests on the interview's own account of the studio's work.

Luxury in India defaulted to imported vocabularies — Italian marble, European furniture — and, in Swain's view, the confidence to tell local stories was being lost.

The middle path between preserving heritage as museum pieces and copying it literally left room for a contemporary regional language.

Indigenous materials and craftsmen anchor the work: hand-chiselled sandstone, local stone and craft supply chains become the luxury signature.

Regional identity scales when you translate principles, not motifs: proportions and craft travel from temple to terminal without becoming pastiche.

As described in the interview, the Neo-Kalinga vocabulary has moved from villas and lounges into public architecture — the Ambedkar bus terminal first among them, with the zoo and state library projects extending the canvas. TheGlitz presents Swain as arguing for an India confident enough to stand beside global luxury with an identity of its own; no commercial or award results are cited.