The open-sided main lodge at Singita Boulders with views across

The open-sided main lodge at Singita Boulders with views across the Sand River. The wooden posts that form part of the
structure are clad in copper with hand-painted details. The curved chairs in the centre of the room are from the Yoda
collection by Kenneth Cobonpue, made from stained rattan vines woven on a frame of mild steel
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GAME CHANGER
SINGITA IS THE COMPANY THAT SHOOK UP THE SAFARI
WORLD A DECADE AGO BY BRINGING SLICK DESIGN AND
SMART SERVICE TO THE WILDERNESS. NOW, WITH A
RADICAL NEW-LOOK LODGE, THEY’RE DOING IT AGAIN.
BY PETER BROWNE. PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM EVAN-COOK
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O
ne thing you learn very quickly
in the African bush is not to draw
attention to yourself. Never wear white
or bright colours, always blend in,
never run or squawk. Safari camps are
meant to be low-key and green-tented;
they crouch out of sight.
And then along came Singita Lebombo
in South Africa’s Kruger National Park,
an astonishing construction of steeland-glass cubes suspended high above
the Sweni and N’wanetsi rivers, all
grand, white and look-at-me, defying
every accepted notion of what a safari
lodge should be. I’d never seen anything
like it and, although 10 years have
passed, I still haven’t.
‘Yes, I know,’ laughs the South African
designer Boyd Ferguson. ‘Lebombo was
a radical departure and it is still ahead
of its time.’ Ferguson, who owns the
Cape Town-based interior-design company
Cécile & Boyd, is the inspirational
force behind that lodge and every Singita
property before or since, including
Boulders, reviewed here for the frst time
since its recent transformation.
The Singita story began in 1993, when
founder and CEO Luke Bailes, having
bought his neighbour’s farm adjacent to
the Kruger (and realising he didn’t need
two farmhouses), opened Ebony lodge
on the banks of the Sand River. Ferguson
was there from the start. ‘The original
owners left behind a stash of good
furniture and silverware and paintings
collected over 50 years,’ he remembers,
‘So we ended up using a lot of it in
Ebony. Even from the beginning, nothing
looked too new or out of place.’ That frst
lodge has evolved and expanded over
the decades – the colour of the slipcovers
has changed many times, the mahogany
chests of drawers have been shunted
about, paintings hung and rehung – but
essentially it looks the same as it ever did.
It feels cosy, old-school, enclosed, safe.
OLD AFRICA HANDS AND SAFARI
PURISTS WERE APPALLED WHEN
BOULDERS FIRST OPENED.
HEATED POOLS? A WINE CELLAR?
Their second project would challenge
all of those things. ‘Luke, Mark [Witney,
now head of operations at Singita]
and myself used to sit on these big
granite rocks a little downstream from
Ebony and dream of building our second
camp there,’ says Ferguson. Boulders
opened in 1996, a ground-breaking,
unapologetically contemporary affair
with 12 enormous, free-form suites built
of rock and fronted by great walls of
glass, with outside showers, sweeping
private decks and plunge pools. ‘At
Ebony we’d been trying to keep the
bush at bay,’ says Ferguson. ‘It was time
to bring the outside in.’
Old Africa hands and safari purists
were appalled. Heated pools? A wine
cellar? Imagine! Nothing but a city
hotel in the bush! But with Boulders,
Singita effectively changed the way
we safari. Suddenly expectations were
raised beyond basic camps and tinned
food to swimming pools and fresh
salads. Service entered the equation;
design concepts were introduced into
the conversation along with wildlife
conservation. It was new, exciting… and
much criticised for its audacity.
But the punters loved it. Boulders
became Singita’s most successful
lodge in Southern Africa. Guests came
back year after year, asking for the
same room, guide and tracker. They
were hooked, much like Aman junkies
developed an addiction to Adrian
Zecha’s nuanced brand of stripped-back
authenticity in Asia.
After Boulders came Lebombo
(and its quieter, earthbound twin lodge
Sweni) in a private concession in the
Kruger National Park, leased to Bailes
by the South African government in
2003. But Singita really took off as
a brand when it moved into Tanzania
in 2006, taking on management of
the 350,000-acre Grumeti Reserves,
set up by the billionaire philanthropist
Paul Tudor Jones (the incredible
Sasakwa Lodge, with its infnity views Clockwise from top left: the Mozambican water pots at the entrance to the lodge were collected by creative director Boyd Ferguson’s brother; elemental
landscapes provided inspiration; abstract artworks created with primitive tools were specially commissioned for the suites; refective copper vessels by
Anatomy Design, South Africa; tassel feathers with wooden bead details recall pre-colonial tribal infuences; the wood-panelled library is hung
with a twig-and-copper installation, and hand-painted murals refect the colour and texture of boulders incorporated into the structure (centre);
elephants pass by in front of the lodge; a handcrafted mohair throw with feather tassels on a wing chair made from metal and rattan
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This page: the romantic beds, recycled from the lodge’s previous incarnation, are made up in natural fax linen; the bedside lamp is Mortar & Pestle in
copper-plated steel and African mahogany by Egg Designs in Johannesburg. Opposite, clockwise from top left: a primitive-contemporary take on the campfre;
vast mobiles in copper hang in the dining room and suites; a glass-fronted bathroom in one of the suites; a collection of skulls, crystals and fossils is
displayed in alcoves in the dining room, and the hardwood tables with oxidised-copper frames are by Egg Designs; boulder-inspired totem sculptures carved
in hardwood; a private plunge pool and deck; woven cane chairs; dip-dyed accent cushions provide the only patterned fabric in the lodge
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EARLIER THIS YEAR, FERGUSON GAVE ME A BOOK OF IMAGES TO REPRESENT HIS NEW DESIGN CONCEPT.
‘THINK SAVAGE, PRIMITIVE AND PRIMAL,’ HE SAID. ‘WE ARE GOING BACK TO LIVE IN CAVES’
over the Serengeti, has become the
diamond in Singita’s tiara). Grumeti
was followed by Jones’s magnifcent
Zimbabwean property, Pamushana,
and most recently a tented camp in
Lamai – a quiet corner of the Serengeti
on the Mara River – and Castleton, the
Bailes family home at Sabi Sand, now
a low-key private safari house. In total
there are now 12 Singita lodges and
camps, with plans for a Mozambique
coastal reserve in the pipeline.
Yet Boulders has always been at
the heart of things, and earlier this year
Ferguson, architect Sally Tsiliyiannis
and a team of builders, landscapers and
designers gave the company’s hardworking protégé a complete facelift.
Although years in the planning, it was
transformed in a six-week, round-theclock frenzy of activity this summer.
before Europeans arrived and started
infuencing things. We are going back
to live in caves.’
When I arrived for the great unveiling
in early June – the frst outsider allowed
access – an exhausted Ferguson greeted
me warmly, introduced me to his team
and showed me around, eager to gauge
my reaction to the completed lodge
and solicit my opinions. He is utterly
I
had last stayed at Boulders in 2008,
when the lodge was going through
its post-colonial period, working
an indigenous look with Mali mud
cloth and woven Kuba textiles from
the Congo, combining tribal artefacts
with just a trace of white colonialist
fantasy (travel chests and horn trophies).
I can’t tell you how revolutionary
Boulders seemed at the time, especially
as every other safari camp seemed stuck
in the Out of Africa era of campaign
furniture, pith helmets and crystal
decanters. But time waits for no designer:
these days you can buy mud-cloth
rip-offs in shopping malls from Cape
Town to Johannesburg, so it was back
to the drawing board.
Earlier this year, Ferguson gave
me a book of images he had gathered
to represent his new design concept
for Boulders. ‘Think savage, primitive
and primal,’ he said. ‘Nothing too
structured or obviously man-made.
I want simple, sculptural forms,
organic and random – the way nature
and we ourselves are formed. I want
to explore ideas around early man,
engaged and never stops working,
rearranging, rethinking.
For something inspired by primal
man, it is a sensationally sophisticated
space, especially the entrance lobby and
seating area with its soaring thatched
roof seemingly held aloft by clusters
of thrusting wooden posts. Everything
Ferguson commissioned, collected or
reimagined from existing furniture (he
likes to recycle) had found its place:
copper mobiles and chunky dark plates
for the dining room; a smooth glass
snake sculpture on a rough wooden table;
vessels positioned to catch the evening
light; even a simple wooden pencil (with
sharpener) on the Singita-branded
notepaper beside the bed.
The deeply calming palette is limited
to bone and bleached skull, to the
browns found in bark and the metallic
sheen of copper, the dark depths of
smoky charcoal and ash. Except for
one or two dip-dyed cushion covers,
there are no patterned materials; the
different textures create their own
designs using light and shade (Ferguson
calls it ‘extreme texture’).
One thing I had not anticipated was
the extent to which Ferguson’s infuence
is felt throughout the rest of Boulders.
There is a new barista to make coffee
and cocktails at the new bar (‘I did have
to explain that this isn’t a 1980s piss-up,’
says Ferguson). The chefs have come up
with a new menu (fussy, fddly food would
not sit well in the caveman environment,
nor would dark food on a black plate).
And even the game guides are being
encouraged to rethink how they engage
with guests; in the dining room, skulls and
bones have been mounted in spotlit wall
recesses, labelled as in a science museum,
so as to gently introduce the subject
of wildlife conservation – especially the
brilliant work the company is doing to
help eliminate rhino poaching – something
both Ferguson and Bailes are determined
to keep at the core of Singita.
‘After all, what’s really important is out
there,’ says Ferguson, gesturing to the river,
where elephant and giraffe are drinking
contentedly. ‘This is just a backdrop, and
everything in it will always come second
to the natural spendour around us.’
Elegant Resorts (+44 1244 897515; www.
elegantresorts.co.uk) offers four nights at
Singita Boulders and Singita Lebombo
from £4,380 per person sharing. The price
is for two nights in a Boulders Lodge Suite
and two nights in a Lebombo Lodge
Suite on an all-inclusive basis, plus British
Airways economy fights, transfers and
inter-lodge fights. British Airways (www.
ba.com/southafrica) fies direct from
Heathrow to Johannesburg twice daily
This page, bedroom detail of a Mortar & Pestle bedside lamp, horn-leg table and feather-and-bead hanging. Opposite: built-in seating in front of
the campfre is covered in bark-coloured fabric from St Leger & Viney in Cape Town; the boulder side table is in polished cement. Large, organic
wooden sculptures commissioned by Cécile & Boyd feature in the main lodge and all of the suites
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