There is no fun watching animals stationed inside a cage without allowing them to roam freely as they want if all security considerations are put in place. Well, there is good news, as all that might end.
For decades, humans have ripped up the natural landscape in Asia, chopping down trees to build luxury resorts in the most beautiful locations and caging wild animals to attract tourists. Bangkok-based hotel architect Bill Bensley is saying “no more.” When a client approached him about designing a resort that included a zoo in Wuchuan, in southern China’s Guangdong province, he flipped the idea on its head: let’s cage the humans and let the exotic and endangered animals roam freely.
Sounds crazy? Bensley is known for maverick ideas, so much so he’s been called the “Willy Wonka of hotel design.” At his Shinta Mani Wild resort in Cambodia, guests arrive via a 380-meter zip wire over the wilderness of the South Cardamom National Park and are invited to join Wildlife Alliance anti-poaching patrols. But he’s not doing things for the shock factor. Bensley is a lifelong conservationist who deeply cares about what humans are doing to the planet.
He’s fortunate that his aptitude for design means wealthy and traditional hotel chains want a slice of his unique eco-focused creativity. Speaking from a cafe in London’s five-star Rosewood hotel, 61-year-old Bensley says the first phase of the eight-year worldwide project, which will comprise several top branded hotels, is expected to open in 2023. The cages for humans will be 2,400 hotel rooms, with a budget of a million dollars per room.
Let’s just say the guests won’t be slumming it. However, it’s not the rooms the California-native is buzzing over. He’s stoked that following a meeting with the head of Southern China’s Communist Party “and his entourage of 47 people,” he has tacit approval on relocating abused animals from zoos all over China, to be released onto the roughly 2,000-hectare piece of land where the human zoo will be located.
To help make his vision a reality, Bensley has hired a full-time zoologist. A glimpse of his gloriously illustrated “overall Masterplan” shows how the reserve will feature individual Asia, Africa, and Australia savannahs for animals to live in their “natural habitats.” Bensley says he believes “everyone has a part to play” in climate change, with young people and their social media accounts holding enormous power for shaping the future of sustainable travel.
The architect published his Sensible Sustainability Solutions white paper in January, sparked by a realization that as an approved designer for luxury chains he has signed countless non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) on hotel building standards and not a single one of the 300-400 page documents that lay out how a hotel should be built has sustainability written into it.
