Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge
Recently nominated as a finalist in the SBID Awards 2019 in the category of Hotel Public Space Design, the Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge lies on the edge of Botswana’s mysterious Savute Channel and within Chobe National Park. The lodge has undergone a full redsign and has become a tented retreat infused with the romance of a bush camp, where guests can discover and connect with the natural world and slow down to the rhythm of the land that surrounds them. This is the result of a robust collaboration among Belmond, Luxury Frontiers (which completed architectural, infrastructure and back of house design), and Inge Moore of Muza Lab (interior design).
As a safari lodge celebrating the great African wilderness, the materials at Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge are simple and natural, including limed and white painted saligna wood floors, rattan furniture and fabrics combining bright geometric prints with earthy tones. The tented public areas—which include a dining room, lounge and bar, library and arrival lobby—are a collection of tented rooms which flow outdoors onto large terraces with magnificent views. The main areas have been designed to lend a comfortable, lived-in feeling, with layers of collected artefacts—yet bring in plenty of local context with clusters of carved poles recalling the sticks used by the indigenous people, traditional decorative screening details and locally crafted lights inspired by the region’s clay pots. In the 12 guestrooms, nomadic poles are translated into bed posts, handmade string chandeliers create beautiful shadows at night and a large terrace becomes a living space outdoors with a carved cocktail cabinet, huge daybed and low-slung armchairs.
Graeme Labe, of Luxury Frontiers who designed the new lodge, said :
“We’ve been doing some work with Belmond for a number of years, and previous to the lodge we did the Eagle Island project. With the Belmond Elephant project, it was an existing lodge, and it was time for a complete refurbishment and overhaul of what was there. The client wanted to look at what elements of the lodge they could repurpose and what needed to go. We managed to save the accommodation units and reuse the timber poles, but other than that, we rebuilt the lodge in its entirety, from infrastructure to furniture. In terms of the infrastructure we had to fit new water systems and change the energy it ran on to green energy, putting in proper waste management.”
The lodge was made completely self-sufficient with regards to water, power and sewage. Previously, the whole lodge was run on generators, which could consume up to 300 liters of diesel daily. This was replaced with a state-of-the-art solar farm of 665 panels and a Tesla battery system (one of the first in Botswana), and this has cut fossil fuel consumption by approximately 90%.
Luxury Frontiers installed a new anaerobic Sewage Treatment Plant, replaced the gas-fired hot water heaters with power-efficient thermodynamic geysers for each of the guestrooms, and put in an automated biodigester (the first of its kind in Botswana). The machine processes five tons of kitchen food waste monthly and turns this into compost, which is then bagged and used in local community-based farming initiatives.
Graeme continued:
“The project was about getting the functionality right and getting a fresh look and feel for the lodge. Belmond has their own development team, they have a very definite and defined brand standard; and one of them is that their properties don’t look like the copied cookie cutter design from a factory. We put a huge amount of work in to make sure that every element is of a bespoke design and in many cases, handmade. For example, for the door handles, we went to a blacksmith and they were hand forged.
“The challenge, as always in these environments, is the location. Transport and logistics are not simple, so we tried to have everything made regionally. On site challenges were that it was completely off grid so the construction team had to live on site and we had to create temporary housing. Everything had to be put on site to make this happen. We had to get specialists on site to polish up things.”
A point of pride and befitting to the safari lodge’s impeccable location within an unadulterated wilderness area, all structures were designed to celebrate the great African bush, frame spectacular views and have a truly experiential function. The new game-viewing hide is social media bait par excellence. For one, it allows guests to inconspicuously watch the area’s beloved herds of elephants and other exotic animals which gather around the lodge’s watering hole. Added to that, are the hide’s beautifully simple design and its composite bamboo walls, which cast striking, spindly shadows throughout the space. Also, a new, secluded spa offering at the lodge was constructed at the edge of the lodge’s site amidst plenty of vegetation, allowing guests to enjoy sumptuous private treatments while immersed in the wild.
Lastly, Graeme commented on the SBID awards nomination:
“After all the work we put in, I think it’s absolutely fantastic to get the recognition of an SBID award. It looks to the level of detail of every element of everything we did on this project. To get recognition for that is fantastic.”
To find out more, visit: www.belmond.com/safaris/africa/botswana/belmond-savute-elephant-lodge.
Game Viewing Hide
Lodge Builders Botswana
Over time, we as a company have built up tremendous experience in the art of lodge construction. We have been lucky enough to work with leading architects in the field, coupled with several safari companies, each coming together to bring their own style and interpretation of the Delta and all it has to offer.
Through the years our company has grown in skill as well as workforce, but at its roots our beliefs have remained untouched. We believe in a sustainable future, we believe in reuse where possible, and most importantly we believe in letting nature speak for itself.
With Savute Elephant Lodge we had come full circle in a sense, as it was the first major contract we ever received as a company in 1996. It was like two old friends meeting again many years down the line.
It’s always tricky to strike the right balance between creative or modern design and being able to mesh well with the natural environment, as often, in an attempt to achieve luxury, elements of a build can become over-complicated. However, through collaboration with Luxury Frontiers, we were able to come together to create a space which blends with the natural surroundings rather than drawing focus from it.
