VILLA UMA

SURROUNDED BY WILD GRASSES, BUILT IN LOCAL BLACK BASALT AND BURNT-ROSE PLASTER, DESIGNED BY AD100 FIRM CASE DESIGN, AND NAMED AFTER THE FAMILY'S MATRIARCH-THIS HOME IN ALIBAG IS A STUDY IN GRAND YET SLOW, SUSTAINABLE LIVING.

- KANIKA PARAB

The swimming pool is Villa Uma's richest subject: a 65-foot-long, dark granite black forest gateau of a pool. Shadowy and decadent, it beckons the villa's guests with an almost wolfish eagerness. The enigmatic pull of the pool, surrounded by wild grasses and hemmed in by black-and-white striped vintage deckchairs, is such that in one sensational minute clothes are off and everyone relents. The whole outdoor scene is a whistling, rustling Slim Aarons double-spread dream, swaddled in a muslin Kerala towel.

A dream of Mansi and Akshat Poddar, a pair of entrepreneurial siblings from Mumbai, the pool was brought to life by architect Samuel Barclay, cofounder of Mumbai-based AD100 firm Case Design.

The villa itself is okay to be the pool's understudy and waits in the wings until you have swum to your heart's content. But when it finally gets to play its part, it shines onstage in more ways than one.

Villa Uma was designed around four mango trees that existed on this one-acre plot long before the Poddars purchased it 15 years ago. The fruit of Barclay and his team's labour is a quietly luxurious, minimally designed home, built with black basalt and coloured plaster. It is smooth, sustainable, wildly landscaped, and shy to reveal its best details.

"Our influences for Villa Uma range across modern and contemporary architects and designers but we are certainly interested in the local vernacular as well. We have taken cues from village houses with deep overhangs to protect window and door openings, while trying to orient each of the spaces to a unique view or experience. This is sometimes a distant view of the hills or a framed portrait of the internal gardens," Barclay says, adding that the plan of the house is loosely arranged to capture these moments of tranquillity.