NYKS is an architecture and interior design studio making designer spaces with BIM integration, founded by Nishtha Kandoi and Yashvardhan Singh — partners in life, and now in design. The name is a joining of theirs, which is also how the work is made: two perspectives folded into one vision.
NYKS was never meant to be only a practice. It began as the place where two ways of thinking could meet without either being flattened — and where the result would be rooms that feel natural, personal and full of heart. Spaces that are meditative and generous at the same time.
For us, NYKS is more than an interior design studio. It’s our dream, where our ideas come together to create spaces that feel natural, personal, and full of heart.Yashvardhan Singh, Co-founder
What brought the two of them together, long before the studio, was an appetite for travel and for exploring — and that shows plainly in the work. Objects, materials and details carried home from other places keep turning up in the rooms NYKS builds.
Nishtha brings simplicity and groundedness: texture, mood, atmosphere — the evocative half of a room. Yashvardhan brings structure, inquisitiveness and untamed ideas: systems, processes and problem-solving — the part that makes a beautiful idea buildable.
Put plainly, one brings evocativeness and the other brings innovation. Between them, a NYKS space tends to hold both the past and the future in the same room.
Nishtha holds a B.S. Arch (Honors) from DAAP, University of Cincinnati, and spent close to six months in Paris on an exchange at École Spéciale d’Architecture — a period she credits with sharpening her individuality more than any other.
Her professional years were spent across three of the world’s significant practices: the Graphic Design department at Gensler in Chicago; the architecture studio at AS+GG, the practice behind some of the world’s tallest towers; and the masterplanning studio at Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) in New York. She leads the design vision at NYKS.
Yashvardhan came to design through an obsessive interest in technology and where it is going, and through history — he reads constantly about how things evolved and how objects came into being.
A habit of taking things apart and putting them back together is what turned him toward buildings: breaking a form down in his head and rebuilding it with his own vision, like pieces of Lego. At NYKS he drives research, execution and the business of design — strategy, new materials, and integrating technology into homes.
It brings me true joy to see my research get alchemized from something off of a paper to real life, in its living and breathing skin.Yashvardhan Singh
Every NYKS project starts with the people who will live there — their routines, their habits, the things they cherish, and how they want the place to make them feel. Where your books live. How your coffee mug sits. The way sunlight moves through the rooms across a day.
For one client it is a wardrobe that fits everything without ever feeling cluttered. For another it is a kitchen that flows the way their mornings actually run, or one corner to read, think, or simply breathe. The studio’s job is to make all of it arrive together — beautiful, working, and effortless to live in.
A home is more than walls and furniture — it’s a way of life. It is how you choose to live.Nishtha Kandoi
Much of the studio’s work is a balance between austerity and opulence. The hardest discipline, by some distance, is stopping short of over-designing. In India, shunning ornament entirely is difficult — the unornamented can even read as inauspicious. Art Deco is invoked at that point: gentle curves, a little fuss, but not too much.
A year of working in Chicago left Nishtha with a lasting regard for Mies van der Rohe and the honesty in that language. What NYKS does is keep Indian roots alive inside it. A modernist room supplies the austerity; layering it with objects, textiles and bronzes supplies everything else. An apsara from Khajuraho set against an exposed concrete wall — that tension is the point, not an accident.
As for a signature style — it is still a pursuit of learning and unlearning over years of practice.Nishtha Kandoi
Indian craftsmanship has long lived by principles the rest of the world is only now rediscovering: beauty in detail, soul in the handmade, and a measure of imperfection that carries natural human error rather than hiding it. It is rare, and growing rarer. The crevices and blotches in a piece are testimony to the time it has withstood and the journey it has travelled.
Every collectible NYKS places carries a skill passed down through generations, a material shaped by time, and the hands that brought it to life. Many are handpicked on the founders’ travels; others are commissioned directly from the artisans who make them. Each one is meant to end up somewhere it belongs — a room where it can be seen, used and loved, rather than admired from a distance.
Crafts the studio commissions and builds with: araish and lime plaster, hand-carved stone and jaali, wood handicraft, hand-forged metal, cane and bamboo, leather and brass work.
NYKS is a turnkey studio: the same people who draw the room are accountable for the room that gets built. It does not take on styling-only engagements.
The studio is moving its drawing and coordination work onto BIM — building information modelling. In practice that means the room is built once as a coordinated three-dimensional model before it is built for real: joinery, services, structure and finishes are resolved against each other, quantities come off the model rather than a guess, and a change in one drawing updates the rest. For a turnkey studio it removes the most expensive kind of surprise — the one discovered on site.
The brief behind the brief — routines, habits, the things worth keeping, how the space should feel.
Moodboards, material boards, sketches. The palette and the tension get decided here.
Drawings resolved to the joint and modelled in BIM, so quantities, services and finishes agree before anything reaches a site.
Artisans briefed and samples approved; bespoke furniture and craft elements made to the room.
Procurement, trades and site — quality, cost and time held honest through to snagging.
The room delivered finished and liveable, down to the objects that make it personal.
NYKS designs and delivers, but a finished space is rarely the work of one discipline. We bring in specialists by niche rather than by habit — a landscape designer when the garden is part of the architecture rather than decoration around it, a lighting designer when the room depends on how it is lit, MEP consultants when services need to be properly engineered instead of accommodated after the fact, and IT and AV consultants when a home or workspace has to be genuinely intelligent rather than merely wired.
Each is chosen for the particular project, and their work is coordinated through BIM — resolved against the architecture and the interiors in the model, before anything is built rather than after. That is the difference between a set of separate consultants and a single coherent design: the ceiling, the ducting, the light fitting and the joinery all agree with each other on the drawing, so they agree on site.
The studio stays accountable for the whole. One team, one model, one point of responsibility from first sketch to handover.
We believe in designing spaces that feel like an embodiment of a soulful throwback to a life well lived and well travelled — spaces that are airy, thoughtfully created, and steeped in nostalgia.Nishtha Kandoi
Yashvardhan puts the same idea from the other side: design is a mix of the little things — comfort, detail, and a sense of belonging and being.
Inspiration, at NYKS, does not arrive from trend boards. It comes from ordinary life: the way sunlight falls across a room, the way air fills a space, the rhythm of daily routines, the objects and textures you handle without thinking. And from the world outside — places visited, colours and patterns noticed in cities, shapes and textures found in nature. Any of it can start a room.
The studio likes creative outpourings in particular nooks, but the space as a whole has to stay one coherent impression and remain a reflection of the person living in it. Above that sit the things that cannot be argued with: context, sunlight, wind, and the vastu principles that coincide with logic. Those trump everything.
It makes no sense to build something that is not of its land.Nishtha Kandoi
Which is also why a NYKS project reads differently in a city apartment than it does against a hillside — the land is allowed to have an opinion.
NYKS designs for the essence of wanderlust: interiors that invite the people in them on a sensory journey through curated memories, tactile surfaces and layered visuals, where warmth carries across the whole room. Interiors are treated as an opportunity to choreograph daily routines — and, where the opportunity allows, to improve on how someone actually lives.
Beyond aesthetics, spatial utilisation forms the nucleus of the ethos. Space has to be divided so that every part of it earns its purpose.
The studio’s continuing pursuit is a heightened emphasis on sustainability: passive design strategies for natural ventilation and daylighting, generous use of locally sourced materials to reduce carbon footprint, and green, planted interiors for better air quality and biophilia.
When it comes to designing a home, it’s important to design a place one would enjoy — rather than building to hide oneself in.Nishtha Kandoi
NYKS was founded by Nishtha Kandoi and Yashvardhan Singh, partners in life and in design. Nishtha is the Principal Designer and leads the design vision; Yashvardhan is co-founder and drives research, execution and the business of design. The studio name joins theirs.
The studio is based in Jaipur, Rajasthan, at 19/20 Chanakyapuri, Bani Park. It takes projects across India — including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Udaipur and Goa — and internationally.
Both. NYKS is a turnkey studio: the same people who draw the room are accountable for the room that gets built. That covers design, artisan commissioning, procurement, site execution and handover.
No. NYKS does not take styling-only engagements. The studio designs and delivers.
NYKS designs around the person, not a look. The studio starts from routines, habits and how someone wants a room to make them feel, then holds a strict balance between austerity and opulence — the discipline is knowing when to stop. Indian craft, commissioned from the artisans who practise it, is one of the ways that atmosphere gets built, not the reason for it.
Calm, serene and homely. The studio designs for the essence of wanderlust — interiors that read like a soulful throwback to a life well lived and well travelled: airy, thoughtfully made, steeped in nostalgia, and warm rather than showy. Spatial utilisation sits at the core, so every part of a room earns its purpose.
By listening before drawing. Routines, habits, the things worth keeping, where your books live, how sunlight moves through the rooms across a day. Above that sit the things that cannot be argued with — context, sunlight, wind, and the vastu principles that coincide with logic. As Nishtha puts it, it makes no sense to build something that is not of its land.
Landscape designers, lighting designers, MEP consultants, and IT and AV consultants — chosen by niche for the particular project rather than from habit. Their work is coordinated through BIM so services, lighting, landscape and joinery resolve against one another in the model before anything is built. The studio remains accountable for the whole.
Yes. The studio is moving its drawing and coordination onto BIM (building information modelling), so a project is modelled in three dimensions and coordinated before it is built. Joinery, services, structure and finishes are resolved against one another, quantities are taken from the model, and a change in one place updates the rest. It suits a turnkey studio, where the people who draw the room are also accountable for the room that gets built.
Araish and lime plaster, hand-carved stone and jaali, wood handicraft, hand-forged metal, cane and bamboo, and leather and brass work — commissioned directly from the artisans who practise them.
Residential homes and private lounges, workspaces and commercial interiors, hospitality, retail and boutique spaces, and institutional projects such as school campuses and libraries. The studio also makes bespoke furniture and collectible objects.
Through passive design strategies for natural ventilation and daylighting, generous use of locally sourced materials to reduce carbon footprint, and planted interiors for better air quality and biophilia.
Six stages: understand the people and how they live; concept through moodboards and material boards; detail the drawings to the joint; commission artisans and approve samples; execute procurement, trades and site; and hand over a finished, liveable room.
Write to the studio through the contact section with the space, the city and what you hope to do with it. Nishtha and Yashvardhan read enquiries themselves.
Tell us about the space and what you dream of doing with it. We read every note ourselves.
Start a Project See the Work Join the Studio