ARRCC designed project, Cheetah Plains in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, has been shortlisted as a finalist for the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2021.

Cheetah Plains reinvents traditional safari‐style architecture to create an altogether new safari experience of nature from within. Combining state‐of‐the‐art sustainable architecture with a pioneering afro‐minimalist aesthetic, Cheetah Plains contrasts confident contemporary inorganic forms with the natural landscape, creating something beautiful in the unexpected creative contrast of seemingly opposing forces. The architecture exists to enhance the experience of the outdoors – not to mimic it, but to complement it so that guests may experience the bush more directly, more immediately.

Where the architecture is pristine and linear, the interior design introduces softness and texture – at times retaining a certain grittiness with rough stone walls, raw concrete, weathered steel and sheets of glass. “The idea was always to redefine luxury and usher in a new language of African design for safari,” says ARRCC director Mark Rielly. “The result is interiors that are at once uniquely African, yet undeniably modern with natural finishes and sophisticated detailing.”

The integrated concept of architecture, interiors, and furniture design gently revolutionises the safari experience and advances the discourse of game lodge architecture. As ARRCC director Jon Case puts it, “The buildings and interiors are symbiotic. They are one idea shared in a truly unique location.”

WAF is the world’s largest, live, inclusive, and interactive global architectural awards programme and festival held in Lisbon, Portugal, from 1-3 December this year.