Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

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L’Amandier Hotel / Nick Gowing Architects

Nick Gowing's L’Amandier Hotel emerges from the rich, red earth of the L’Amandier Plateau. So, whilst remaining true to the natural colour palette, he juxtaposed the buildings’ bold and striking geometric lines with the contours of the surrounding hills and mountains.

Benguerra Lodge / Michaelis Boyd Associates

Michaelis Boyd Associates, the London-based architecture and design practice, has completed the redesign of Benguerra Lodge, a luxury beach retreat on an unspoilt island in the Indian Ocean. The project involved the complete renovation and modernization of an existing lodge on Benguerra Island, the second largest island of the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique. The lodge is nestled in the bush...

Arijiju Resort / Life Grand Group

Arijiju lies on the lowland. The building behaves as though it has always been on that warm stone hillside with living, grassed roofs that move with the air and link into the earth and forest. It is there but not there. Partly sculptured into the rock bed, the subtle entrance opens into a fragrant, greened space with generous Swahili curves and an air of elastic calm. Walls of stone create walk...

Mandarin Oriental / Pascal Desprez + Gilles & Boissier

Mandarin Oriental, Marrakech is set amid lush, lavish gardens surrounded by a walkway that allows guests to fully appreciate their charms. An avenue lined with palm trees provides a spectacular entrance, referencing the traditional Moroccan palm groves, while small mounds recall the dunes of the South Moroccan desert. Scattered among the palm trees, pink bougainvillea are cut into Japanese shap...

Hotel Sahrai / Christophe Pillet

The five-star Hotel Sahrai, designed by the architect and designer Christophe Pillet, enjoys spectacular views of the largest medina in the Arab world, taking in twelve centuries of the city’s history in one fell swoop. Just 2h30 away from Paris, it offers a totally new hotel experience in Fez. An alternative to the shady isolation of the riads and the impersonal feel of the big resorts, its ar...

Karoo Wilderness Center / Field Architecture

The architecture of the Karoo Wilderness Center is a result of a thorough process of investigation into the origins and character of the Karoo landscape and the flora and fauna that result from its particular qualities. The tectonic events that produced the specific topography of the site, trajectories of water runoff, wind movement, soil composition, and effects of plant and animal species on...

Banyan Tree Corniche Bay / Foster + Partners

The masterplan is for a discreet and environmentally intelligent architecture that blends harmoniously with the lush and extensive landscape. Green fingers of lush vegetation extend down towards the sea, with a series of contemporary buildings inserted amid tropical plantings to create an architecture that at once responds to the contours of the landscape and recedes into the green totality. Fo...

Angama Mara Lodge / Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens

Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens have spent the past 20 years developing a hand-crafted haute couture body of work in Africa. Where possible, their design philosophy has been to live onsite (in many instances in exotic locations such as North Island in the Seychelles), managing one project at a time by developing and creating a total design: a new language of architecture and lifestyle specific ...

Mahali Mzuri Safari Camp / Real Studios

It is a sight of beauty, a merging of man and nature, a design endeavour that only fans of both architecture and nature "archinatures" can experience in its entirety. Real Studio sort to touch the earth lightly and blend in it with these terracota canvas pieces gently placed onto the Motorogi Conservancy in the Maasai Mara, perhaps one of the most famous wildlife sceneries in the world. And it ...

Sandibe-Okavango Safari Lodge / Nicholas Plewman Architects

The design of Sandibe not only meets these challenges but is invigorated and inspired by them. It is habitation made manifest of all the creatures that have ever found or made shelter in and beneath the site’s ancient trees. The lodge draws its inspiration from animals that carry their shelter with them or weave it from the organic materials to hand. We chose the pangolin – Africa’s armadillo –...

El Gouna Hotel Resort / Michael Seagraves Architects

Hassan Fathy would be proud standing on one side of the red sea and glaring into the yonder, eyes fixed on the red adobe architecture replication of his ideas into the El Gouna Hotel resort in Egypt’s hot and humid air. It is a oxymoron idea into architecture, using locally affordable materials and technology to create a luxurious environment for the well-heeled, trying to adopt a cultural and ...