In Conversation with Monika and Sarah Choudhary, Habitat Architects
- There is a fine line between holding onto something out of passive nostalgia and keeping it because of its active, enduring relevance. How did you maintain this distinction when selecting the artists, designers, and objects for this curation?
Monika:I think nostalgia is often misunderstood. We assume it means looking backward. I don’t think it does. Nostalgia becomes limiting only when it prevents us from seeing the present clearly. This exhibition isn’t interested in preserving the past for its own sake. It’s interested in understanding why certain objects continue to play a role in contemporary life. That became our curatorial discipline. Every object had to answer one simple question: if this object were made today, would it still deserve a place in our lives? Not because it’s old. Not because it’s rare. Not because it’s expensive. But because it continues to demonstrate intelligence through its making, its usefulness, its repairability, or its ability to gather meaning over time. As architects, we ask ourselves the same question about buildings. Not every old building deserves preservation. Not every new building deserves permanence. Age is not the measure of value. Contribution is. Perhaps that’s the distinction we hope visitors leave with. We don’t inherit preciousness, we confer it, through the choices we keep making.
- Sarah, you’ve noted that the spatial experience will be as important as the objects themselves. How are you designing the physical space to encourage a fast-paced, modern audience to slow down and actually encounter these objects once the doors open?
Sarah:We realised very early that if we displayed these objects the way people consume images today, we would lose the very qualities we were trying to celebrate. Objects reveal themselves through attention. The marks of a maker’s hand, the weight of a material, the subtle evidence of repair or use — none of these can be appreciated at the speed at which we now move through the world. So we approached the exhibition almost as if we were designing a building. The sequence matters. The pauses matter. The light matters. The distances between objects matter. Rather than overwhelming visitors with information, we wanted to create moments of quiet in which one object could be fully encountered before moving on to the next. In many ways, the space is asking visitors to practice a different rhythm of looking. Perhaps the rarest luxury today is not time itself, but the willingness to give something our complete attention.
- What was your curatorial litmus test when selecting the participating artists and makers to ensure the show feels forward-looking rather than just sentimental?
Monika: We never divided makers into traditional or contemporary. That distinction felt increasingly irrelevant. Instead, we looked for people whose work demonstrates continuity of thought. Every maker in this exhibition understands that good design is not simply about creating something new. It is about creating something that can continue to live with dignity as the world around it changes. Some work with inherited craft traditions. Others use contemporary processes. What connects them is not their technique but their intention. They make objects that invite care rather than disposal, repair rather than replacement, and long-term relationships rather than momentary desire. To us, that is what makes the exhibition forward-looking. The future will not be defined only by what we invent. It will also be defined by what we choose not to abandon.
- Monika, you beautifully state that an object’s survival through time and changing tastes is its own kind of authorship. What do you hope the audience takes away from these surviving objects regarding how we consume things today?
Monika:I hope people leave with a different definition of value. Today we often associate value with rarity, price, or novelty. This exhibition proposes another possibility. Perhaps value is demonstrated by an object’s ability to remain relevant across changing lives. Every repaired edge, every softened surface, and every sign of use tells us that someone believed this object deserved another day, another home, or another generation. That, to me, is a profound form of authorship. It means the maker created something strong enough to continue gathering meaning long after it left the studio. If the exhibition encourages people to buy fewer things, but choose them more thoughtfully and care for them more intentionally, then I think it has already achieved something worthwhile.
- Monika, you have spoken about responsible luxury on global stages like the UN. How do you balance a client’s desire for contemporary global trends with your commitment to preserving local craftsmanship and cultural narratives?
I’ve never believed that responsible luxury is about looking backwards. Nor do I believe contemporary design requires us to erase where we come from. For me, the most compelling projects emerge when global ideas are interpreted through local intelligence. Craft is not simply decoration. It is accumulated knowledge. It carries an understanding of climate, materials, repair, proportion, and making that has evolved over generations. When we collaborate with artisans, we are not preserving tradition as a museum piece. We are allowing that knowledge to continue evolving within contemporary architecture and design. Responsible luxury, therefore, is not defined by abundance. It is defined by permanence. It asks whether what we create today will still feel meaningful decades from now, not because it followed a trend, but because it understood its place, its people, and its purpose.
- What is one object in your own lives that has earned the right to be kept through the years and generations?
Monika: For me, it is a notebook that has quietly travelled with me through different phases of my life and practice. It isn’t valuable because of the paper or the binding. It has become valuable because it contains the evolution of thought. There are sketches that later became buildings, fragments of conversations, observations made while travelling, and ideas that were abandoned or slowly matured over many years. When I look through it today, I don’t simply remember projects. I recognise how my way of seeing has changed. Perhaps that is what all truly precious objects do. They don’t preserve a moment. They preserve a relationship between memory and possibility, between who we once were and who we continue to become. In the end, this exhibition is not really asking people what they own. It is asking a quieter, more personal question: what in your life has earned the right to remain.
