Three Ways to Build in a Landscape Without Flattening It
A tented camp on stilts in Kafue National Park, three new treetop lodges in Touraine and a year-long renovation in Moab all claim the wilderness as their subject. Only one of them lets the site set the terms.
Fourteen point three metres is a long way up. That is the height of the three Horizon Terrace Suites at Anantara Tented Camp Kafue River, reached by glass elevator, with star beds on the upper level. The number matters less than the reason for it. The whole camp sits at least 3.5 metres off the ground on timber platforms, which Minor Hotels says makes it the only lodge in Zambia raised that far, and the platforms exist so that animals can keep walking underneath. Build low and you fence. Build high and you do not have to.
That is the useful distinction between the three wilderness projects that have landed this season. All three describe themselves as being in dialogue with nature. Only one of them has let the landscape impose a structural cost.
Kafue: the constraint is the design
The camp has 13 keys, which is small enough to be run properly and small enough to be priced accordingly: three Horizon Terrace Suites, nine Pool and Bush Villas with plunge pools and indoor spa rooms, and a 400sqm Presidential Villa with its own boat access and spa zone. Every villa has a dedicated host handling dining, activities and wellness. Three years in the making, according to Nico Vivier, Minor's regional director of operations and development for Africa, and it sits inside a park under long-term ecological restoration by the Zambian government and African Parks.
The specifics of the build, by Meg Ralph Spaces, are where the seriousness shows. Prefabricated structures, so that no existing trees came down. Solar power throughout. Water purified, treated and bottled on site, with single-use plastic excluded from the outset rather than phased out later. Soft red lighting after dark, which is a small decision with real consequences for nocturnal wildlife and one that most camps quietly skip because guests find red light unflattering.
The dining is deliberately unfixed: a floating pontoon on the river for dawn breakfasts, afternoon tea and sunset dinners, then Luzuba Harvestry and Twalumba Bar & Lounge for modern Zambian cooking and fireside evenings, with Spice Spoons cooking classes for anyone who wants to learn rather than watch. Spa treatments happen in the villa, including steam, which Anantara claims is unique in Zambia. There is also a Technogym platform floating in the river. One suspects the yoga is better attended than the free weights.
One oddity in the press material: the camp is said to have "almost seven metres of river frontage," which is presumably a slip for kilometres, since seven metres would be a jetty.
Build low and you fence. Build high and you do not have to.
Moab: the desert as a view
Red Cliffs Lodge, a Marriott Bonvoy property on the Colorado River, has finished a renovation that ran through 2025 and touched almost everything: a redesigned lodge, a new restaurant and cocktail lounge called Ember, 40 creekside and 39 riverfront suites, and 31 riverfront cabins as the final phase. Sormeh Rienne took the public spaces and restaurant; Atwater Inc Studio, under founder Stina Funch, did the guestrooms and cabins.
The thinking is sound as far as it goes. Rienne says she let the desert lead, and the evidence is floor-to-ceiling glass, framed views of the mesas and a quiet palette. A double-sided fireplace anchors the lodge, with the lounge on one side and Ember's tall dining room on the other, serving fire-driven modern American food. Funch describes keeping the guestrooms deliberately restrained so that the river and the rock do the work.
But this is a refit, not a rethink. The desert here is scenery, framed and brought indoors, and nothing about the footprint has changed. Book the riverfront cabins rather than the creekside suites; the whole argument of the place is the water and the light on the cliffs, and only one of those categories delivers both.
Touraine: four metres and a farm
Loire Valley Lodges, in 300 hectares of the Duporterie forest two hours from Paris, has added three lodges suspended four metres above the forest floor, taking the estate to 21. Each is by an artist: Into the Wild by founder Anne-Caroline Frey, drawing on Peter Beard and East African photography; Reflets by David Sitbon, warm and light-filled; Ride My Bike by New York artist Thalia Lempert, built around bicycles and several shades of green.
The more consequential news is the food. Ardent and Asperatus have merged into Ardent Summer Session, open daily for lunch and dinner, with sharing plates, starters, mains, cheeses and desserts, plus a five-course tasting drawn from the same a la carte. Since the tasting is assembled from dishes already on the list, order a la carte and choose your own: red tuna over binchotan, spelt risotto with charred leeks, monkfish with wild flowers, Noire du Berry chicken with buckwheat. Desserts run to Scots pine, spruce and ground ivy. Much of the vegetable and poultry supply comes from LaFerme, the estate's farm, only a year old. Eat in the herb courtyard.
The new Passion Stays, bundling golf, chateaux, gardens or wine into all-inclusive packages, are packaging rather than design. The lodges and the farm are the real work.