Studio LCD turns Delhi’s SOCIAL into a postal memory

In Connaught Place, Studio LCD brings visuals of the Indian post office, letters and lattice gates to this sprawling restaurant

12 Oct 2026

Rhea Oswal

Rewind to your childhood days; there was always a sense of thrill in taking a trip to the post office. The queue, the scent of sealing wax and the view of stamped papers being filed away, all stacked somewhere between our memory and reality. In Connaught Place, New Delhi, this thrill is reimagined in brick, brass and neon at SOCIAL’s newest restaurant and bar.

Designed by Amith Chhabra of Studio LCD, in close collaboration with the Impresario Hospitality & Entertainment team, Riyaaz Amlani, Ravi Kaul and Arushi Saini, who contributed to research and archival curation, the restaurant spans an area of 7,500 sq ft, brewing with hints of discovery. It opens into a sequence of postal departments turned into dining rooms, a lounge with booths named after postal functions, a circular island bar named the Dispatch Room, a private dining room sealed behind a steel lattice gate, and a communal table built for SOCIAL’s characteristic sense of community. Thematic corners, from an oversized postcard installation to a mural honouring the neighbourhood postman, punctuate the route between them.

"It's inspired by the working dispatch areas of historic post offices, the spaces where letters were received, sorted and sent across the country. We've reinterpreted that idea as a place where people now come together, connect and spend time"

Amith Chhabra

Stenciled letters spell Sorted above a wall of pigeonholes stuffed with paper and a nearby door to the a restroom is marked Femail

Stenciled letters spell Sorted above a wall of pigeonholes still stuffed with paper, while a nearby door marked Femail Washroom slips in a playful postal pun of its own; Photography by Avesh Gaur

Sorted by design

The new SOCIAL began, fittingly, with a conversation about vanishing rituals. “There was a point when visiting the post office was simply part of growing up,” muses Amith. “People stood in queues, filled out forms by hand, waited for letters, and unknowingly created memories that stayed with them for years.” Rather than recreating a post office as a literal set, the studio spent months studying archival photographs, postal counters, typography and sorting systems, choosing to translate memory into architecture rather than nostalgia into décor.

A cane- topped stool near a Lost Articles and Recovery counter

A cane- topped stool waits at the Lost Articles and Recovery counter, its wire mesh windows and Address Correction booth recreating the quiet bureaucracy of an old Indian post office; Photography by Avesh Gaur

A mural titled The Postman Who Became Family honours Harbans Singh, the rural postman with four decades of service

A mural titled The Postman Who Became Family honours Harbans Singh, the rural postman whose four decades of service are retold here through neon signage and archival memorabilia; Photography by Avesh Gaur

Stamped in context

Connaught Place supplies the bones. The circular columns reinterpret the arcade’s colonnades while a run of wainscoting borrows its proportions and colours from the classic Indian post box, stretched into a continuous band across the space. Aged timber, brass, stone and lime-washed walls carry postal reds and muted greens, a palette inspired by old government buildings. Even the lighting carries memory forward: tube light fixtures familiar from old post offices reappear, fitted with warmer technology, while illuminated stretch ceilings mimic the soft fall of a skylight in select corners.

A handwritten love letter in cursive script on the wall in a room with lounge chairs and a brick floor

A handwritten love letter stretches across the wall in cursive script, while lounge chairs and a brick floor set a warmer, intimate corner within the restaurant’'s postal narrative; Photography by Avesh Gaur

A circular private dining room wrapped in a bespoke red steel lattice reminiscent of collapsible security gates

A circular private dining room is wrapped in a bespoke steel lattice, borrowed from the collapsible security gates of historic post offices and repainted in a confident postal red; Photography by Avesh Gaur

The Dispatch Room

Every project needs a centre of gravity, and here, it is the Dispatch Room — a circular island bar wrapped in handcrafted timber windows marked Bulk Services, Parcel Booking and Air Mail. “It’s inspired by the working dispatch areas of historic post offices, the spaces where letters were received, sorted and sent across the country,” Amith explains. “We’ve reinterpreted that idea as a place where people now come together, connect and spend time.” Close by, a private dining room sits behind a bespoke steel lattice, a nod to the collapsible gates once found at post office counters, now recast as a design statement rather than a barrier.

A Hindi couplet glows above the private dining door in a space with a checkerboard floor

A Hindi couplet glows above the private dining door, its lattice screening drawn from old post office counters, while a checkerboard floor plays off the arcade’'s civic geometry outside; Photography by Avesh Gaur

Neon envelopes take flight from an illustrated book on the wall, part of the Love Letter Lost in Time installation that recalls a letter found decades after it was written; Photography by Avesh Gaur

Signed, sealed and delivered

Ask Amith what proved hardest, and the answer is the detailing. “A project like this relies on a lot of subtle interventions that people might not consciously notice, but together they shape the overall experience,” he says. “We wanted everything to feel honest and effortless, so the space never came across as theatrical.” The result is a rediscovered civic building, where a small red letterbox, a hand-stamped “No Junk Mail” graphic and a neon Hindi couplet above a door do the work of making strangers feel like regulars.

Pigeonholes with paper parcels near a hand-stamped No Junk Mail graphic and Fragile Goods and Complaints counters

Pigeonholes still holding paper parcels sit below a hand-stamped No Junk Mail graphic, with Fragile Goods and Complaints counters recalling the departments of a working Indian post office; Photography by Avesh Gaur