Housed in a compact 93-square-metre former apartment in the northern suburbs of Bangaluru, MOS’ studio consists of an open-plan co-working space, a meeting room, and Thomas’ office, plus a kitchen that doubles as a supply room and materials library.

Marking the entrance, a Victorian-inspired ornate door frame painted in a bright green hue playfully stands out against the white-painted walls and light-grey hardwood flooring. Right next to it, the studio’s mascot, a snooty bow tie-wearing British dragon named William, is part of a decorative wall installation that extends along one of the “Super Mario” shared desks. Featuring a matrix of white and black square tiles, the desks were designed as a nod to vintage console video games. William is one of several illustrated characters adorning the walls such as “Stamets the Mushroom Man”, named after the renowned mycologist Paul Stamets, and “Kunoichi”, a rebellious girl ninja, both of which are made with a mishmash of found objects and materials like old belt pieces, leather snippets, pleated tartan, metallic safety pins and acrylic bullets.

At the heart of the open-plan space, a round table made from waste marble whose base is encrusted in black pyramid-shaped beads is paired with reclaimed IKEA chairs offering a place for spontaneous brainstorming sessions and quick vendor meetings. In the adjacent lounge area, two Art Deco-inspired sofas animate the monochrome nook with teal blue and mint green hues. Enveloping the sofas, a decorative installation on the walls and ceiling is conceived as a scrapbook of ideas, references and inside jokes anchored by the phrase “Sometimes I wish I was Normal”, each letter in a different material and font, and dotted with cartoonish figures like a grumpy cat, a slouching ghost and a man with a pencil shoved up his nose.

Painted across the door of Thomas’ office, a corset-wearing tigress with ‘Big Cat Energy’ tattooed on her arm needs no explanation. Additional slogans like “Sin away” in cyan neon and “Unearthy delights” in Scrabble-like wall tiling can be found inside where Victorian-era details such scalloped trims, ribbed panels and arched forms are filtered through a Memphis Group aesthetic. A neo-futuristic, mohawk-sporting rendition of the Vitruvian Man speaks of the studio’s experimentation in materials and techniques, while a marble desk with granite inlays and green zigzagging legs attests to its dedication to detailed craftsmanship as does “Ki-no-Kami”, a sculptural lamp in the form of branch-like double helix that took five months to develop.

In the galley-style pantry-cum-supply room, a loopy, doodle-like wallpaper design is juxtaposed with the orthogonal grid of the white wall tiles with blue grouting. Cool-toned wood laminate cabinets are paired with custom handles in pastel pink and blue colours while a blue-striped white pipe running across the ceiling is fitted with rotatable lamps and rose-tinted acrylic inserts. 

In the meeting room, a lightweight partition made of marble, stained wood, acrylic and glass allows the space to be easily reconfigured, goes to show that despite their unconventional, zany appearance, all of the furnishings were designed with functionality in mind. In the same room, a full-length mesh board provides a functional surface to pin material swatches, sketches and objects of interest, while a Mr Doodle-inspired glass panel functions as a handy whiteboard for the team to scribble on. We could go on with many more details but you get the picture.

As the studio remarks, “Sin City is a space alive with anecdotes of our successes, trials, doubts, and wins, a reminder that a creative life follows anything but a linear, predictable path”.