Villa Aurora

Emirates Hills is built on plots rather than in towers, and this is one of the wider ones. The villa is arranged as three linked pavilions rather than a single block, so every principal room opens onto the terrace on the garden side and nothing looks back at the road.

The main pavilion is glass on three sides. A twelve metre sliding wall stacks into the wall cavity and leaves the living room open to the pool deck. From October to April that is how the house gets used. In July it stays shut and the chiller does the work. Floors are honed travertine across the whole ground level, and the kitchen is a single five metre island in the same stone, with a working pantry and the staff kitchen behind it, out of sight of the dining table.

All five bedrooms are upstairs, each with its own bathroom, four with a terrace. The principal suite takes the western end and has two dressing rooms and a bath set into the window line. On the lower floor there is a nine-seat cinema, a climate-controlled wine room, a gym, and a two-bedroom staff apartment with its own entrance from the motor court.

The community gate is manned around the clock and the plot backs onto the course, so nothing will be built behind it. Parking is for six cars under cover. The villa was finished in 2019 and has had one owner.