India, Aug. 13 -- Designer Devanshi Jain's newly unveiled studio in New Delhi's Dera Mandi isn't just a place of work - it's a living sculpture nestled deep in a private forest.

"I chose to build here rather than in a conventional industrial zone because I wanted the surroundings to echo the ethos of the work: offbeat, thoughtful, and deeply site-responsive," she says.

The 1,500 sq ft space, originally built by her grandfather in the 1970s and left untouched for decades, now forms the heart of her slow, experimental practice.

After earning a BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons in New York - where she first encountered biofabrication "not as a trend, but as a way to build differently" - and a diploma in shoe design from Milan's Istitu...