Click link on thumbnail.

More images...!

Restaurant interior...

Ariel overview...

.

.

The client - Spencer's Creek operate a number of tourist related facilities in the area, including river cruises and a wildlife sanctuary, and diversification into a hotel operation was seen as complimentary to their core business. Originally conceived as a small lodge of only 15 bedrooms, the project has developed over an eight year period with additional facilities increasing the total bed spaces to over 60, a casino and night club. The lodge is named after the Ilala Palm, a species indigenous to the Zambezi valley, which produces the vegetable ivory kernel. It's site is located at the northern edge of the town and opens onto the national park, and is only a few minutes walk from the rain forest. Town planning restrictions limited any development to two storeys in height, imposed strict building lines on the main road frontage and restricted the building footprint to a maximum coverage of 30% of the constrained site area.

The project was initially developed in the late 1980's at a time when foreign exchange allocations for construction projects were unavailable. The design therefore maximised the use of local construction materials (walls of plastered and painted clay bricks, roof structure of bolted gum pole trusses and reed thatch, floor finishes of locally quarried slate tiles, wall finishes of local hand made glazed mosaic tiles, fixed furniture of disused mahogany railway sleepers) to channel the limited foreign exchange resources into building services, kitchen equipment and bathroom fittings.

The stand falls steeply towards the river valley, thus the topography allowed the development of an unconventional building section to maximise natural air movement, finance not being available for air conditioning installations. Passive heat control solutions were adopted for the bedroom wing where a grassed terrace roof insulates the rooms below from direct solar gain. The public facilities of visitor parking, reception, bars, restaurants and swimming pool deck are set out in a fan shape and are clustered around an open courtyard at upper ground floor level. The principal restaurant and pool bar both open onto a wide covered verandah and the grassed terrace bedroom wing roof giving panoramic views over the dense bush towards the plume of spray created by the Falls. Lodge administration offices are located within the roof space adjacent to reception whilst bedrooms open directly onto the national park at lower ground floor level. Wildlife, particularly warthog, elephant and buffalo are frequent visitors, grazing immediately in front of the bedroom wing.

Ref. .

.

.

.

Richard Beattie - information & images

.