On The Moodboard: Soft-Geometry's Nostalgic References
Co-founder Utharaa Zacharias shares the buildings, movies, and memories that are infused in her work
In the world of California-based design studio Soft-Geometry, everything is personal. The creation this is most immediately obvious in is Mirrors for Aliens. On view at SFMOMA through May 2026, it was inspired by the studio co-founders and married couple Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary’s experience as immigrants in the US. The piece is the studio’s take on the steel thali plate, common in middle class Indian homes, which they reimagined as a wall-mounted mirror. As Utharaa describes below in further detail, the piece reflects the emotionally intense process of developing a 350 page personal reflection for their application for a Green Card for “Extraordinary Aliens.” Even for those who aren’t aware of this deeper meaning, it’s plenty striking as an object.
There’s personal resonance to there pieces that don’t have quite as sharp of a narrative charge too. Their Elio Lamps are made of handcast resin, in the beginning crafted in the kitchen of the apartment Zacharias and Chaudhary were living in. The live-work spaces that all of their designs have been developed in disappear the boundary between their creative lives and personal lives, resulting in objects that evoke their studio’s titular softness.
Below, Utharaa and I discuss five references that both she and Palaash return to over and over again in their work on Soft-Geometry.
The reference: Architecture/ LIC Housing complex, Ahmedabad by BV Doshi
Utharaa: A lot of our work asks what is both Indian and modern, and we look to Pritzker-winning Indian architect, the late BV Doshi. Doshi’s influence on post-colonial Indian architecture, along with his writings on religion, philosophy, modernism, and tradition—and even his sketches of Indian gods, animals, and cityscapes—offer a lens into how to navigate and create work that is distinctly Indian, contemporary, and shaped by personal experience.
LIC Housing is a brilliant example of how Doshi addressed urban housing with dignity, adaptability, and a deep understanding of the social fabric. Designed in the 1970s, it is a masterclass in low-cost housing that is modular, climate-responsive, and community-driven. Its staggered terraces, shaded courtyards, and expandable units allowed families to grow and adapt their homes over time. And they looked cool—brutalist, but with soft colors, and yet unmistakably Indian. It just belonged.
Palaash and I went to NIFT New Delhi for our undergrad, a campus designed by Doshi, and only later did we realize how intuitively its spaces gathered people—like the kund, a step well that was both an outdoor classroom and an end-of-day hangout.
Do you remember when you first saw the LIC Housing Complex?
I saw this particular image in 2018 or 2019. It was right at the beginning of us starting Soft Geometry, and I was kind of really feeling the tension of not having role models to look to who had a similar trajectory. There's a wealth of designers and artists in the US to look up to, but we were trying to navigate both, like this idea of softness, and then really wanting to root that in what is Indian. When I found his work, which admittedly I found his work way too late, because he's such a celebrated architect as I later found out, but it was this moment of recognition. He first studied in India, then he went to London, ends up training in Corbusier's office. He worked with Louis Kahn, has all these chats with all of the modernists at the time, and then he comes back to India. India's just gotten independence, and is really kind of shaping thought around what Indian architecture then becomes.
Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of his teachings have not been followed very well, but just finding, just through this picture, it just became this window into just studying him. It was like listening to this wise elder. It was really cool to find him as a reference, and like just his sketches, his approach, especially in how he looked to the street versus how he looked to how rich people live. He had this approach of shifting influence from something that's top down, to just reversing it, where he's like, really studying behavior and how people live at the street level, and then translating that into his projects that are across different, you know, different classes.
This project in particular, is for workers for the LIC program, which is a government program. So it's for government employees. How he thinks about it as kind of modular units, and how he thinks about it as rooms that can, you know, some of them have function. The kitchen has a function, the bedrooms have functions, but then there are so many spaces that evolve and are completely left to the person using it, which is sort of how Indian homes are from that time and probably even still, where every space is kind of multi-purpose. It isn't as strictly defined by function.
How do you feel like your relationship to Indian culture and tradition has changed over time, whether from being in America or from developing more as a designer?
I think that the natural thing that has happened is that, you know, I grew up in India, I studied in India. I thought India was great when I was there, but it took both of us coming here, me and Palaash, where it just really became this romantic kind of thing. We start studying India, and we're really not looking academically, but we're really trying to remember and sketch and write down how we grew up. Suddenly it's like, "Oh my gosh, we didn't see it then, but this is so beautiful." It was so unique, it was so exciting and layered and intricate. I think the distance between being here and essentially going back home every year, nostalgia just becomes a big influence. It just became our main inspiration point, because we feel so deeply about it, we're longing for it.
The reference: Photograph of a lawyer’s office set up, a desk propped up on a moped outside a courthouse in Gujarat, captured by German photographer Ole Witt from his series, ‘Help Desk – Random Acts of Administration’
Utharaa: We first saw this photograph in a covid India fundraiser and so immediately resonated that we bought it. It has since hung in every space we've worked in; it's helped us make lamps in kitchens and weave cane on our floor. Makeshift and make do are essential Indian traits, and it’s helped us navigate with lightness and enthusiasm—a makeshift life in the US.
How do you think the idea of the spirit of the makeshift has inspired your work?
I think the biggest way we live that out is in all of the live work spaces that we've had. We've had Soft Geometry kind of as a side gig, basically, for over five years, or six years, depending on when you start from. 2018 technically was when we first exhibited something, but we formed the LLC a couple years later. But we've always done it. The reason it's so fuzzy is because we've always just made where we've lived. We started taking notice of that during COVID, when we first saw this piece. When we bought it, it immediately went up on our wall. It was like, "That makes sense," like, that's exactly what we're doing. That was when we were experimenting with resin, admittedly, like a toxic material, but it was like, "Oh my gosh, we can't go to a shop anymore. We can't be making furniture. What should we make that's smaller?" We could experiment with resin [in our space] and we were making these lamps in a kitchen in an apartment in San Jose, where we were during the lockdowns. It was bizarre, but it worked so well.
The picture kind of gave permission for us to do that, whereas I think previously, there was this big hesitation of always like, this isn't how things are supposed to be done here. Like, you should have a maker space, or you should have a studio. I think the fact that we made so much work in that apartment that wasn't even a good workspace, really kind of showed us what we enjoy doing and what comes naturally to us. It taught us that we're comfortable with a certain level of figuring things out on the go, as opposed to the perfect setting.
It also really related to personally our status in the US is, we're not permanent residents. We're here on visas. Especially during those COVID years, there was a lot of anxiety about whether the renewals would come through. So there's always been a level of like, "This is not our forever place."
The reference: The Kabadiwala, or scrap-man
Utharaa: Palaash and I, and probably anyone who grew up in India in the ‘90s, share the memory of the kabadiwala, or scrap-man, who arrived with the loud clattering of discarded objects. He would open his bundle and lay it out before your front door for the women of the house to choose from. It was essentially a hyper-personalized thrift experience because he seemed to know exactly what you liked and needed. You could also give things to him in return.
It’s an interesting parallel to the thrift & vintage economy we’ve found ourselves in here in Los Angeles and the romance we feel for what is second-hand, what is found, and how it continues to live on. There was always banter with the scrap-man, always a deal to be had—and the visual of his giant cloth sack has stuck with us, even in how we package things.
What do you see as the difference between thriftiness in the US and in India—or in India when you were growing up there specifically?
I think this is one of those things that is a reflection that I have only now that I'm like so far removed from it, now that this probably doesn't even happen anymore. This doesn't happen in my neighborhood at home anymore, probably not in Palaash's even. Looking back like it's the equivalent of getting an email today from a brand or something. When we were at home, we would have people knock on the door like five to six times a day, that was normal. They were all so specific, like, we bought fish on a guy who came on a bike, he would have this giant crate of ice and fish, and then he would know the fish that our household bought. We bought milk that way. There was this guy who fixed up appliances door to door. And then there was the scrap-man.
The image of him feels really iconic because of the way he held things. And this bundle that he had was always basically a giant bed sheet, like some sort of block print would be on it. It would be very colorful. So it's this really stark memory in my head, and Palaash has a version of this that is so specific to New Delhi and Ghaziabad too. So I know that this at least used to happen all across India.
Buying from the scrap-man involves so much banter. The housewives would always play disinterested. In my case, whenever I witnessed it, my mom used to work so it was never her, but it was this nanny figure. She would give him all sorts of attitude. She didn't want anything he had. Then he would, like, lay out his cloth and all of the things would fall out, and he would convince her and tell her what the other lady bought. It was just this incredibly social experience. It's so opposite from how we are, like if we wanted that type of custom personalized experience, we would have to go to the highest heights of retail. Whereas there and in my childhood, it was the cheapest and most mundane secondhand experience.
The reference: The steel thali, an iconic Indian object.
Utharaa: The steel thali is in our opinion, one of the most iconic Indian design objects, ubiquitous in India, especially middle-class India. It's an unbreakable plate for all meals, perfectly designed for multi-curry Indian meals to sit separately without mixing, and what eventually became a subject of our work Mirrors for Aliens.
How did you decide that you wanted to make your own take on the tray?
The honest answer is that we didn't decide to. In 2023 we were putting in this application for a green card, and it's called the Green Card for Extraordinary Aliens. They give you all these examples that are, like, Oscar award winners, and you're left with this sense of like, "Oh my gosh, like, I cannot measure up." Your lawyer is telling you, "No, you have enough, keep working." It eventually became a 350 page document that we had to submit. Every day we would work on it and it was this exhausting ritual of like having to prove that you're extraordinary. In one of those days, while washing the plate, I think it was me who saw my reflection in it, and I realized how scratched up it was and then Palaash started sanding it. It became this exercise where we would work on this application, and then when we wanted a break from it, we would start sanding these four plates.
That's when we started to think of this idea of this becoming a mirror. What is really funny about it is, my family made fun of me for bringing these plates because in in our childhood, this was the cheap plate. Everybody aspired to go from the steel plate to porcelain. It was very middle class because it cannot break. So the steel plates in my house are the same steel plates from like, 30 years ago. It was cool that that almost dismissed item later became this point of reflection for us. Not only for our identity and all of that crazy stuff that was like going on emotionally, but then really appreciating just how it looked and how it inspired the sense of both past and future. When we polished the steel, it increasingly looks more and more futuristic. So that was really cool to see, like, how this plate from our childhood is like transforming in real time by our hands into something that's like a picture for our future. It's a very surface level metaphor, but it helped us get through that.
Eventually to just think of the act of shifting it from from the tabletop to the wall, it was really meaningful to us. After launching the piece, almost everybody who has bought the piece is an immigrant. It's been so wonderful. One story especially that I remember is an Indian woman who was actually Canadian who ended up having to wait 22 years for her green card in the US, and then she eventually decided it's not worth it, so she was moving back to Canada. She was like, "I just want to get this piece before I go back." It was not only this feeling like, "Oh my gosh, there's like, more of us," but also just being shocked that this really simple act that we did could translate that way, and all of the emotions of a design object can be so much more.
The reference: the film Kumbalangi Nights (2019)
Utharaa: The movie is a Malayalam film about four brothers that redefines the idea of home and masculinity through the lens of an unconventional, fractured family set in coastal Kerala—where I am from. It was one of the first Malayalam movies I showed Palaash and we revisit it often because it embodies softness—the primary theme in all of our work—in every way possible. From the innocence and depth of its characters to the lightness and comedy that accompanies their challenging stories, the awkward layers in their relationships, and the honesty of the humble home they share, all set against the visual backdrop of Kerala's backwaters and soulful music.
The film first inspired me to start teaching Palaash Malayalam and sparked a project where he traced and interpreted the Malayalam script through a series of minimalist steel vases, which we’ll be releasing this year.
It is also simply just a fantastic film—for anyone.
Using the film as a jumping off point, how do you nurture this relationship to softness, like in your life and in your work?
So I think the word really came to us when we moved here and didn't really know anybody except each other. There was a sense that things were a bit hard, and then finding softness in each other, although we didn't articulate it that way until much later, but that was what was articulated was this idea that we are soft people. There's this memory of finding things to be hard and then finding softness when we were making things with our hands, when we were putting things together. That's really the start of the studio. This layer of looking to India comes a couple years later, and then it really rounds it out for us.
This movie specifically, it becomes this, first of all, the kind of point where I'm introducing Palaash to my state, my language. There was always an apprehension of, like, "Will he understand?" For reference, in India, he's from almost as north as it gets, and then I'm from almost as south as it gets. It's different languages, different religions. There's just so much that's different culturally. So there was that apprehension.
When I was seeing his reaction to the movie, I was like, "Oh no, this is actually very universal, this feeling." The movie is just the perfect embodiment of softness, because you have this very non-traditional family, because it's kind of broken. At its core there are four brothers and they're really challenged by their financial situation. One of them is suffering from deep emotional, psychological traumas. It's all set in Kochi, where I'm from, and we have water everywhere. So there's back waters everywhere so every day they get up and they get on their boats. So it was visually just really beautifully shot. When I see it through Palaash's eyes, I noticed that there's all these layers that I didn't first notice. The language sounds so much more beautiful, the music makes so much more sense. That's on the top of his playlist now and that makes me so happy.
I suggest this movie to anybody who wants to watch an Indian movie because it is such a different experience than watching a Bollywood movie. Everything that's kind of bombastic and flamboyant about Bollywood, you'll find everything that that's not here. It's much softer. It's much more intricate. It's much more nuanced in the characters and it lets you sit with the discomfort of everything they're going through.
Find Soft-Geometry’s work on their website and on Instagram.