Rajnish Hedao x Swati Interiors bring stories of nature and nostalgia to their designs

What are objects if not vessels for emotions and associations—with people, places and memories? And what is craft if not the creative act of giving these associations a considered material presence, elevating them to functional art forms? With Flight of Nostalgia (A Story of Wood & Wings), architect and production designer Rajnish Hedao brings together familiar artefacts from the past and original paintings inspired by nature and lithographic printing, translating fragments of memory and observation into objects for contemporary spaces.

Presented at the second edition of the Architecture & Design Film Festival in India (ADFF:STIR Mumbai), held from January 9 – 11, 2026, the collection found a setting within LIVinSET at the Godrej sunken court within the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA).

Conceived by Mumbai-based Design Circus—led by Riyaz Himany and Payal Bania—in collaboration with STIR, LIVinSET was an experiential product gallery staged as a cinematic set within the broader, multifaceted programme of the three-day design and film festival. Bringing together furniture, lighting, textiles and other sculptural designs, the design installation featured products from Gaggenau, Siemens, Hedao x Swati Interiors, Madheke and Taamaa, in a dramatic reinterpretation of the domestic interior at the design event.

This collaboration coalesced Hedao’s conceptual vision and the making expertise of Swati Interiors, led by CEO and managing director Nandkishor Surajmal Mistry. An architect by training, Hedao has spent close to three decades in production design, creating cinematic environments for popular Indian films including 3 Idiots (2009), Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), Dhoom 3 (2013) and Guzaarish (2010). His practice of constructing worlds through architecture, objects, colour and texture finds another distinct expression in his eponymous design practice. “I don't really see Hedao Installations as separate from my work as a production designer. In many ways, it is an extension of the same creative journey—only the scale and medium have changed,” he tells STIR.

The Flight of Nostalgia collection draws on vintage objects that may have slipped out of everyday urban lives: steam boilers, brass kettles and samovars, whose forms retain associations with domestic rituals and past ways of living. These are rethought through original paintings of birds, flora and fauna—‘the transient and fragile splendours of nature’—and further informed by Hedao’s long-standing interest in photography, sketching and observing natural environments. Wood and metal prove a lasting ground for imagery drawn from the ephemeral world of vivid-hued feathers and flowers.

At the LIVinSET, two pieces from the collection seemed to invite curiosity and multiple readings. Nearly two metres tall, the Open Crown cabinet, with its oval frame and interplay of circular and vertical forms, could suggest a crown, a woman carrying a wicker basket on her head or tribe dancers gathered in a circle to call in the rain, according to the Indian designer.

The Royal Grey Samovar, meanwhile, draws on the journey of the traditional samovar from Russia to India. Reinterpreted as a functional cabinet, its urn-like wooden form, coral-tree finish and brass knobs are accompanied by an original painting of an African Grey Parrot. “You don't necessarily know what you're looking at immediately, and that makes you want to spend a little more time with it,” Mistry says about the designs.

For Hedao, the connection between production design and object-making lies in their capacity to tell stories, in the compression of a larger narrative into a smaller form. “In cinema, I tell stories through spaces created for the screen. With Hedao Installations, I tell stories through objects that live in real spaces. Instead of designing an entire cinematic environment, I am compressing a world into one object,” he shares.

Within LIVinSET, he found an opportunity to extend this thinking into the spatial experience of ADFF:STIR Mumbai 2026. “In the context of a design film festival, the installations could almost be experienced like individual frames from different films.” Mistry, too, felt that the pieces brought another layer of discovery to the overall setting.

Beyond the two showcased pieces, the 11-piece collection continues to take shape through works at different stages of realisation. The Toucan Double Tumbler, currently under manufacture, pairs a distinctive purple, wood-and-metal form with a painted yellow-throated Toucan, whose associations with communication and showmanship add another layer to the object. Also in production, the Alchemist's Console uses illuminated glass vials, a mirrored back and dark, textured surfaces to create an atmosphere of ritual around serving.

Elsewhere, The Imperial Twins draws on the symmetry and stateliness of antique forms, while Family Ties, a set of three cabinets, draws from a sketch by Hedao’s father done 20 years ago. Set Me Aside, with its walnut curves and water-lily painting, brings the collection's interest in nature into a more contemplative register.

For Swati Interiors, the essence of the collaboration lay in carrying the intricacy of these imagined forms through the demands of making and craftsmanship. Proportions, curves, joins and finishes require close attention, particularly where unusual forms must retain their visual lightness while functioning as furniture. “Our role was really to take those ideas through the making process—to work through the details, materials and construction and make sure the final pieces had the same impact in person as they did as an idea,” Mistry relays.

Across Flight of Nostalgia, objects stand for encounters between the remembered and the imagined, where the familiar is made newly legible through the meeting of material, image and memory. A samovar recalls the rituals of gathering, a bird carries the fleetingness of nature into a lasting form, a cabinet holds the traces of a sketch, a landscape or a remembered encounter—contemporary designs insisting on daily presence and rooted in nature and nostalgia.