Twelve trapezoidal cottages, built in 1985, at the edge of a forest. Their bones are good — sited carefully in relation to the trees, structured simply and honestly. But four decades of incremental modification and maintenance had compressed their interiors, obscured their spatial potential, and disconnected them from the landscape they were built to celebrate. The brief for the Casa Cabana Villas — as Bricolage Bombay reimagined Avhyay’s cottage accommodation — was to restore that connection, while meeting the comfort and luxury standards that the contemporary hospitality market demands.

The first act was the most radical: the removal of the false ceilings that had been installed over the years, reducing the cottages’ original height and obscuring their structural character. By stripping back to the original roof structure, Bricolage Bombay recovered the full volumetric generosity of the cottages and introduced a clear spatial hierarchy between the main living area and the sleeping level. Mezzanines were then carefully inserted to exploit the newly revealed height — creating sleeping or reading lofts that hover above the main room, connected by simple timber stairs, and commanding views of the private pool and the forest canopy beyond.

The material decisions in the Casa Cabana Villas follow the same logic as the rest of Avhyay’s redesign: natural, honest, and contextual. Stone floors connect the interior to the landscape; mud plaster walls breathe and absorb humidity in the manner of traditional Indian construction; raw concrete headboards provide a strong, sculptural anchor for each bedroom without the cost or resource intensity of custom furniture. The cottages’ porch areas were transformed into poolside decks — a seemingly simple intervention with transformative consequences. The boundary between room and pool, between sleep and water, between shelter and garden, becomes fluid, and the experience of staying in a Casa Cabana Villa becomes one of seamless, unhurried connection to the Tungareshwar Forest.

The private pools — each cottage has its own — were positioned and landscaped to integrate with the existing terrain rather than sitting upon it. Rock plantings, native grasses, and garden enclosures create a sense of discovery around each pool: a private world within the larger resort world. The landscaping was designed to be low-maintenance and ecologically appropriate to the forest fringe context — no lawns, no exotic species, no irrigation beyond what the local rainfall sustains.

The bathroom redesign addressed an original planning decision that had become a functional inconvenience: the external bathrooms were internalised, dramatically improving guest privacy and comfort. Each pair of cottages shares a common entryway — a detail that encourages a sense of neighbourhood within the resort without compromising the privacy of individual units. The Casa Cabana Villas, in their redesigned form, have attracted consistently outstanding reviews from guests who cite the combination of luxury and naturalness, of contemporary comfort and forest immersion, as the defining character of a stay at Avhyay.