Aranya is a single teak-framed house set on a shoulder of primary rainforest, its infinity pool cut into the deck at the edge of a two-kilometre drop. A living room with the dining table set into its west end, then bedroom, bathing room and loft, stepping up through the volume under one pitched roof — each turning to the same valley. Mist crosses the deck most mornings before nine.
Four interior spaces and the pool deck. One family or two couples, staffed and provisioned, ninety minutes from the valley floor.
Four materials, used plainly. The house is a frame; the valley is the subject.
Locally milled and oil-finished: posts, rafters, deck boards, joinery. The whole structure is one wood, darkening a shade each monsoon.
Dark fired brick and a single carved basalt tub in the bathing room — cool underfoot in a house that is otherwise entirely warm.
The pool sits flush with the deck and stops at nothing, so its far edge reads as the same grey as the sky behind it.
Not a material you choose, but the one that governs the house — it fills the valley at dawn, and the whole building is turned to watch it leave.
The valley is white until eight. Coffee on the deck, hornbills somewhere below, and no reason to be anywhere.
The pool ends where the ridge does. Warm water, cold air off the forest, nine hectares of it and nobody else.
One track, one gate, one house. Staff come when called and otherwise leave you entirely alone.