MECCA X NGV Women in Design Commission 2025

Nipa Doshi is an award-winning designer and co-founder of London-based studio Doshi Levien. Through her work, Nipa explores and celebrates beauty, plurality and diversity, using design to disrupt homogeneity while fostering equal exchange between cultures.

For the MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission, Doshi shares a deeply personal reflection on how memories, rituals and relationships can enrich human experience with A room of my own. The project embodies Doshi’s design philosophy, which merges craft traditions with modernist design principles to celebrate the coexistence of cultural influences.

The multipurpose cabinet at the heart of A room of my own pays homage to the women who have shaped Doshi’s life. Inspired by the Indian kaavad – a portable shrine that unfolds to create a temporary site of worship – the cabinet functions as an intimate ‘room’ for gathering one’s thoughts. Accessible from two sides, the cabinet also includes a vanity and a writing desk, components that support contemplation and self-expression. Inside the cabinet, portraits by Doshi hand-drawn from memory capture the clothing, jewellery and gestures of women she has known and admired.

Combining solid and void, colour and geometry, the materials and structure of the cabinet create an architectural composition that recalls the buildings that inspire the designer. Accompanying the cabinet is Doshi’s first custom typeface, a bold and ornamental design originally drafted by hand. Together, these elements represent a kind of manifesto for Doshi’s practice – complex, layered and deeply rooted in cultural narratives, celebrating design as a living practice of care and creativity.

The MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission is a major series that invites internationally renowned female designers and architects to create significant new work for the NGV Collection. The five-year program is supported through M-POWER, MECCA’s social change initiative that champions opportunities for women and girls through the power of art, design and cultural storytelling.

The NGV warmly thanks MECCA for supporting the acquisition of these works.