On the third floor of a most unassuming elevator building in Murray Hill, Aroon and Indur Shivdasani turned a former bait-andtackle shop into a loft-like apartment with an exotic feel. The elevator opens into an entryway that resembles a Mediterranean courtyard where visitors are greeted a stone fountain in the shape of a lion’s head, surrounded by vines.

The Shivdasanis moved to the city from Westchester three and a half years ago after a four-year search for the right space. Mrs. Shivdasani, who did the apartment’s interior design, agreed to move once they found a space that felt like a country house. “You still have a feeling of a house while you get all the advantages of being in the city,” she said.

“Both of us came to the conclusion that we couldn’t live in a cookie-cutter apartment on the Upper East Side,” Mr. Shivdasani, who recently retired as president and chief executive officer of a chemical marketing company, said. Mr. Shivdasani, who received his undergraduate degree in engineering, spent three months planning the design for the 3,600-square-foot apartment. The gut renovation took only 11 weeks. “This was designed so that all the furniture we had fit in,” he said. “We made all these nooks and crannies, like the bar and the book shelves, to make this space work.”

The couple also needed room to display their extensive art and sculpture collection. “We were trying to find a space we could express ourselves in,” Mrs. Shivdasani said. She is the executive director of the Indo-American Arts Council, a not-for-profit arts council showcasing Indian artists and artistic disciplines. She made several works of art in the apartment herself, including a series of painted ceramic masks that hang in the master bath.

“I knew the colors and kind of ambiance I wanted,” Mrs. Shivdasani said of the apartment. She chose a sunset-colored marble countertop for the open kitchen. “The solid slabs of marble look like the desert to me,” she said. The marble is also found in two of the three bathrooms, and most of the rugs – there is at least one in every room – match the deep clay color scheme.

The Shivdasanis have their respective offices on each side of the living room, where sun streams through large north-facing windows. The walls separating the offices, living room, dining room, and family room reach about three-quarters of the way up to the ceiling. “We didn’t want to kill the loft concept,” Mrs. Shivdasani said. “We are a family and we like to entertain a lot, but we also need work space as well.”

Those walls are covered with the paintings, prints, and masks the Shivdasanis have collected over the years. “We get one to two pieces a year, maximum,” Mr. Shivdasani said.The collection is a mix of work by contemporary Indian painters and artists, and sculptures and prints from Asia, Africa, and Europe. M.F. Husain is a particular favorite.”Husain is the maestro in India,” Mrs. Shivdasani said. His works hang in the bar alcove area of the living room and the master bathroom. In the foyer, prints from Rembrandt’s house in Amsterdam hang near a painting found on the streets of SoHo and paintings by Mrs.Shivdasani’s sister, artist Reeta Karmarkar. A silk painting of a court scene with a Tree of Life is near the kitchen.

Perhaps the most striking piece of art in the Shivdasanis’ home is Anjali Ela Menon’s sculpture of an Indian goddess, which stands between the two bedrooms at the end of a long hallway. The woman is split in half by a sword and dressed in a traditional Indian sari from the waist down. She has a shaved head and around her neck are paintings of male gods that are meant to be her trophies. Mr. Shivdasani said she represents the modern Indian woman and the many roles she has to play.