“Plantation” project in Thornybush

August 2009 saw the completion of a luxury private bush lodge in Thornybush. This project had its own unique set of problems that architects don’t have to deal with on normal building sites – hiding from charging elephants to a pride of lions wondering right through the building site on their way to a morning’s hunt. Site meetings, therefore, ran on a different par – try hiding in a loo, then realise there is no door to the loo, and that the “visiting cat” could walk right in to grab a bite … On another site in the Timbavati 5000 litre empty water tanks were delivered on site, a couple of days later when the building team arrived – no tanks, lots of footprints though – the elephants had decided the tanks were their latest “toys”, they had tossed (tusk puncture marks) and rolled the tanks for 2km into the veld!