TRAVELS - Adaptive Reflex

At Brazil's fabled Uxua hotel, a new upcycled villa hints at larger green goals

- JULIE COE

I magine Eden, only you’re encouraged to eat all the fruit you want—bananas, papayas, dragon fruit, jaboticabas— as you stroll on through. This is Wilbert Das’s vision for Uxua Casa Hotel & Spa, his beloved resort in Trancoso, Brazil. The former creative director of the fashion label Diesel and his partner, Bob Shevlin, helped put the beach town on the map when they opened the hotel in 2009. But they have spent the past few years implementing an ambitious sustainability project, adding a solar plant, an on-site farm and dairy, and food forests that produce biomass fertilizer alongside beans and manioc. Das says it all grew from an increased, pandemic-inspired need for “a space where you have clean food, clean water, clean air.”