Honey, I Shrunk the City: 3 Designers Scale Down Indian Cities Into Statement Objects

Cities have always inspired designers, but today, they are doing something far more radical with this inspiration. They are miniaturising skylines, façades, and terrains onto furniture pieces and collectable objects. Design Pataki curates three such evocative works that reimagine cities at an intimate scale. In the bar cabinet designed by Bobby Aggarwal, Shakti Bhavan rises as a vertical tableau of balconies and cornices. SHED resurrects the Old City of Bombay as a sculptural object. WITHIN translates the undulating terrain of the Kashmir Valley into the carved planes of a chair. These exquisite creations rely on a deep understanding of materials, masterful craftsmanship, and architectural precision to bring these intricate objects to life. Let us look closely at these miniature cities and understand the designer’s vision behind them.

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1. Shakti Bhavan Bar Cabinet by Atelier Bobby Aggarwal

Scaling down Mumbai’s architecture, Bobby Aggarwal, founder of Bobby Aggarwal, distils the city’s Art Deco legacy into a heirloom-worthy bar cabinet. Drawing inspiration from Shiv Shakti Bhavan, which overlooks the Oval Maidan, the cabinet rises like a miniature façade, crafted from printed leather along with wood and brass accents. Defined by rounded corners, its leather-clad exterior is rendered with stacked balconies, verdant creepers, red awnings and fenestrations that echo the geometry of the iconic Art Deco era. “Bombay has always somehow found its way into my work, as a tribute to the city that is so much a part of my design journey,” says Aggarwal.

This limited edition piece reveals a contrasting mood within. Open the doors and a bright quilted ultra suede lines the interior, while intricate brass railings frame each shelf, recalling the glamour of old cinema halls. Reflecting on his enduring connection to the city, Aggarwal says, “I didn’t want to design just another bar cabinet. I wanted to capture a feeling of Bombay evenings, of lived-in elegance, of something nostalgic yet still alive—intimate, layered, a little indulgent. Perhaps that’s what Bombay does to me. It stays. And it shows up in the details.” Functional at its core, the bar nonetheless feels experiential, inviting one to linger, pour and partake in the nostalgia it so thoughtfully preserves.

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2. Bombay Carousel by SHED

Designers Priyanka Shah and Swapnil Gange of SHED stepped into cartographers’ shoes for a recent project, scaling down Mumbai’s precincts into an exquisite object dubbed ‘Bombay Carousel’. Conceived as a kinetic microcosm of the city, the piece resists the idea of a static skyline and reimagines the city as a rotating carousel that begins at the sea and gradually moves inward through streets and built fabric. The sea forms the base, referencing the coastline as both origin and anchor, while upper layers capture dense street life—including kaali-peeli taxis, BEST buses, handcarts, and the iconic cycles of the Mumbai Dabbawalas. 

Crafted primarily in teakwood for its tensile strength and burnished warmth, the sculpture is enriched with brass, metal, coloured glass, and stone. Each component was handcrafted in-house using carpentry, lathe work, and metal fitting. “The design process began with research and observation, breaking the city into essential elements through drawings and scaled studies,” explains Shah. “Prototypes were developed to test proportion, repetition, and legibility in motion.” The result is a kinetic installation that operates as both sculpture and spectacle, that renders Bombay’s layered resilience through calibrated motion and extraordinary craftsmanship.

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3. Rozan-e-Kashmir Chair by WITHIN

Can you sit on an entire landscape? The Rozan-e-Kashmir Chair by WITHIN proposes that you can. Part of the larger Rozan-e-Kashmir collection, the chair is chiselled into walnut and anchored in form, using traditional Kashmiri techniques such as khokherdar, jaboraweth, and sadikaam. Look closely, and one discovers delicately crafted Kashmiri shikaras gliding across its surface, lending dimensionality and finesse. These intricate ornamental and figurative details have been shaped with chisels, gouges, and knives, requiring years of training, precision, and patience. The contrast between the tactile cream upholstery and the intricate wooden lattice heightens its duality of softness and structure. 

“India is my forever inspiration, and Kashmir is one of its most exquisite verses,” says Ishaan Tuli, the co-founder of WITHIN. “There are layers upon layers: the shifting seasons, the lake that holds the sky, the warmth of its people, the carved architecture, the art form of calligraphy, the gentleness of its craft traditions. It is a modest attempt to combine all these elements into form.” Through such works, it becomes evident how objects can hold entire geographies within them, allowing cities and regions to be experienced not just as destinations, but as forms we live with every day.