The cottages were designed to feel more like hotel rooms than prison cells, and some CIA officials jokingly referred to them as the Marriott.
The cottages were designed in collaboration with Isla Van Damme, a family friend who is a consultant for Bungalow 8, the fashion and home furnishings store that Mr. Ahluwalia's daughter owns in Mumbai.
The modestly scaled accompanying cottage was designed by Cristina Buendicho of CB Architects of Ventnor.
Well-heeled whimsy is the order of the day at this Litchfield Hills Relais & Châteaux retreat, where each of the 18 guest cottages was designed around a Connecticut theme (tree house, maritime, Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and so on).
The zinc-roofed cottages were designed by Sally Henzell, an unreconstructed hippie who once dated Blackwell before marrying Perry Henzell, the director of "The Harder They Come".
The Ugadale golf cottages are designed in a traditional style – plaid carpets and bed throws, leather chairs and dark polished furniture – with power showers and flatscreen TVs, and can be rented by the night or the week.
The cottage garden is designed to appear artless, rather than contrived or pretentious.
We opted to stay in the grander Rattenbury cottage ($875), which was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright and features probably the biggest shower in the state of Wisconsin.
The station building was designed by the Norwegian architect Peter Andreas Blix in the same Swiss cottage style as the stations Ås and Såner.
By now, many of the original houses have been added to and renovated, but most retain the ivy-covered and tree-shaded look of the cottages they were designed to be.
