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The wilderness pods at Mount Camdeboo Private Game Reserve are located in isolated scenic spots on the reserve, 45 minutes from the main lodge, and surrounded by nothing but vast open landscape. -
The pods are designed to touch the ground lightly, resting on steel “feet” rather than dug foundations, so their presence doesn’t scar the landscape. Their aesthetic, which references simple corrugated-iron agricultural sheds – almost a local vernacular – seems to belong in the landscape. -
The interiors are designed around an experience that centres on the bed, so the windows are positioned to open up views of the landscape and sky. -
The walls, floors and ceiling are “skinned” with timber cladding – a warm, minimalistic approach that reduces visual noise and draws the eye outside. -
Space is used efficiently, with storage cleverly concealed to reduce clutter. -
The bathrooms are generously proportioned and luxurious (and complemented by an outdoor hot tub). -
Although meals can be ordered from the main lodge and delivered to the pods, the compact kitchen is fully equipped. -
Despite the spartan aesthetic, creature comforts abound. -
Frameless glass doors leave the view as uninterrupted as possible. An outdoor viewing deck provides an unmediated experience. -
Discreetly positioned electric fences, which vanish in the grassland, create a safe area for outdoor dining, fireside drinks and hot-tubbing. -
The robust exterior and insulted walls of these Scandi-inspired huts provide ample shelter from the extremes of the Karoo climate, while carefully positioned “punctures” for windows ensure panoramic views for a powerfully immediate experience. -
The robust exterior and insulted walls of these Scandi-inspired huts provide ample shelter from the extremes of the Karoo climate, while carefully positioned “punctures” for windows ensure panoramic views for a powerfully immediate experience.
WORDS Graham Wood PHOTOS Paris Brummer
The remote wilderness pods at Mount Camdeboo Private Game Reserve harness the idea of the tiny house movement for a powerfully immersive and luxurious experience of nature.
Iain Buchanan, conservationist and founder of Mount Camdeboo Private Game Reserve near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape, took his family for an extended stay at the reserve during the pandemic. They did quite a lot of camping out in the veld, he says, seeking out some of the more remote (but spectacularly beautiful) spots to pitch their tent.
While the reserve has a lodge and other accommodation, the experience left him wondering how he could offer guests the immediacy of the camping experience – the sense of awe you feel being alone in the vast wide-open – but with a dimension of luxury and comfort. The idea posed several challenges. The Karoo is known for its temperature extremes, so “the traditional old Livingston-type canvas tent just wouldn’t cut it,” says Iain. But conventional building in the “middle of nowhere” is difficult and messy, and scars the landscape. A pod or tiny house, however, might work: a little Scandi-inspired hut, designed just right.
READ MORE: Local Escapes: Off-grid Tiny Cabins
He worked with architects Andre de Villiers and Simon McCullagh to create a shelter small enough to sustain the sense of barely mediated immersion in your setting that you experience while camping, but robust and well insulated enough to keep you feeling cosy and safe (this is Big Five country, after all). They played with the vernacular form of the corrugated-iron shed, perhaps with a nod to early settler cottages, so these sleek little forms seem almost at home in the landscape.
Architect Michael Hobbs was later brought in as the “technical guy”, as he puts it, since the pods had to be designed in a way that “touches the ground lightly”. The pods, he explains, occupy the space where architecture and conservation overlap. “Ideally, we want to be able to remove them five years from now, and leave nothing but footprints behind,” says Iain.
READ MORE: Of the Earth: Kalahari Lodge
The pods are potentially reusable, so could go on to have a second life elsewhere, adding to their sustainability credentials. They are built off-site, popped on the back of a truck and dropped onto steel “feet” (with no dug foundations) at their destination. The only disruption to the site is for the wastewater treatment system, which is buried, and the ground above it rehabilitated. The landscape around the pods remains pristine.
Views, of course, are paramount, so windows have been strategically positioned to create vistas while you’re lying in the bed, which is the focal point of the experience. Apart from the stacking doors that concentrate the view to the front, a narrow slit window to the side frames an incredible panorama, and a skylight invites in the night sky.
The almost nautical dimensions of the interior allow an up-close sense of engagement with nature while, paradoxically, the sense of compression inside the pod enhances the awareness of space around you. The sleek timber cladding throughout has a stripped down, warm minimalism about it, and its almost Japanese sense of efficiency allows the inclusion of creature comforts – the very best linen; power and WiFi; and even an outdoor hot tub – without clutter and visual noise. “It’s all designed around the experience,” says Michael.
Iain and Michael have realised that the pods could be manufactured and assembled almost anywhere – on other reserves, farms, even in gardens of ordinary homes in need of a home office – so they continue refining the design, and making them available through their company Apex Glamping.
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