Inspired by Nature A house in Namibia inspired by the weaver nest
In the oldest desert in the world, the Namib, entrepreneur and conservationist Swen Bachran has built a fantastical house inspired by the sociable weaver nests that dot the landscape.
In the vast, ancient desert of Namibia, nature is the greatest architect. Millions of years have refined the shapes of the shelters that birds and animals create for themselves here. The gigantic domed nests built by sociable weaver birds in camel thorn trees are one of the most striking examples.
“They’re architectural masterpieces,” says Swen Bachran, the entrepreneur and conservationist who established the Namib Tsaris Nature Reserve with his neighbours in the desert.
He and his designer and artist friend Porky Hefer visited a spot nearby what was to be the site of The Nest, as they dubbed the fantastical house modelled on these weavers’ nests that they created over the next eight years. At that stage, Swen was still scouting around for a potential conservation project. “Porky came to the farm and we camped on this land together,” says Swen. They sat under the camel thorn trees and marvelled at the communal nests, their perfect efficiency suggesting countless lessons in biomimicry and possibilities for vernacular design.
“He went back after that weekend with impressions and later presented me with doodles of what we called the Love Nest,” Swen recalls. “It was really a one-bedroom nest with a little lookout deck, a library and a shower.” At that stage, Swen had in mind an idiosyncratic “little retreat for family and friends with a token giraffe”.
Porky is well known in his native South Africa for his whimsical and wonderful pods and nests. His work, he explains, is about creating cocooning environments: fun, imaginative places of isolation that “give people room to grow, room to change”. When he and Swen went camping in the desert, he had been nurturing the idea of creating just such an “environment” on an architectural scale for some time. His sketches got the ball rolling.
Time went by, and as the idea incubated, Swen acquired three adjacent farms, together totalling 23,000 hectares, and establishing a nature conservancy. As he set about rehabilitating the landscape and setting in motion plans to reintroduce wildlife, he and Porky settled on a spot on the edge of a desert valley and decided to go ahead and build a house-sized nest.
Swen had chosen land where there was already a conservation footprint, and as he gained neighbours, they banded together to drop fences and create a 100,000-hectare nature reserve – grander plans than just that “token giraffe”. The reserve now has a constitution and a 100-year plan to sustain it in perpetuity. “Whatever there was 100 years ago, from a rodent to a rhino, we will reintroduce,” says Swen.
He and his neighbours created road and water infrastructure, and removed “anything human-made that we don’t need. It’s a pristine landscape now,” he says.
Alongside the ballooning scale of Swen’s conservation efforts, the “love nest” morphed into a four-bedroomed, double-storey villa. Porky’s conceptual drawings became more refined and they began approaching architects to collaborate with. But, as one after another brushed them off, they realised they’d have to go it alone. “They all thought we were nuts,” says Swen. So they forged on, gradually assembling a construction team and recruiting craftsmen and artisans.
It was a mammoth task. It took a year alone to weld the rebar frame that forms the structure. It was simply too hot in the baking desert to work between midday and three o’clock. Waves of builders and craftsmen came and went.
In keeping with the ethos of the place, the idea was to use local materials and skills. Bricks were manufactured on site. The stone cladding for the walls was excavated and harvested on site. The thatch is river grass brought in from Northern Namibia, collected on the banks of the Zambezi River. The trucks transporting it, however, couldn’t reach the site, so it was carried 14km along dirt tracks by tractor.
Local skills were adapted to thatch the structure outside and in, reversing the usual approach for the interiors. They also incorporated lessons from the design of the weavers’ nests. The gaps between the inside and outside layers of thatch served as insulation – they’re further apart where the sun is harshest, so a wider pocket of air is sandwiched between them and can act as insulation. The principle is to allow the inhabitants of The Nest to mimic the movements of the birds, who keep their chicks closer to the surface during the day when natural ventilation can cool them and then move them into the depths of their nests at night, where the embodied heat keeps them warm.
The lessons in biomimicry extend to aesthetic touches sustained throughout the design. Beautiful kiaat timber finishes on floors and wall panelling (all certified) introduce the sense that you are indeed in a treehouse suspended in a camel thorn tree. The circular porthole windows reference the entrances of the weaver’s nests and the circle is carried through in details from the sunken lounge to the pool.
The beds in the children’s room, individual pods moulded into the glazed plaster walls that you enter via oval portholes, recreate the idea of Porky’s pods. They’re inspired by the way the weaver birds create nooks for themselves in the dense grass of their nests, creating a kind of architectural furniture. Likewise, the sunken lounge plays with fusing architecture and furniture, the dropped level working in concert with the natural ventilation to keep it comfortable.
The furnishings and interiors were the work of Maybe Corpaci, who at one point spent a biblical 40 days alone at The Nest, seeing it through to completion. “Because of the nature of The Nest, there is not a single straight wall, it was quite difficult to find furniture,” she says.
She found herself bringing imported Italian furniture into the wilderness on the back of a truck, while also working on-site with artisans to design bespoke pieces.
“Overall, I tried to complement the architecture without clashing with it,” says Maybe. “Each piece blends with the palette of The Nest and its natural surroundings, but if you look closely, it’s quite unique and bespoke and beautiful.”
For the outside furniture, she drew on the M’Afrique Collection from Italian firm Moroso, which introduced a broader African aesthetic to the furnishings. These, together with pieces by South African designers, are combined with mid-century pieces to add homeliness and character.
She also picked up on the tactility and texture of the house itself and extended the idea in other furnishings. Tables were made using polished Namibian granite – it looks like marble, but is actually local stone. “When you’re inside the house and look at the table and then you look out to the surrounding mountains, it’s the same palette, so that is quite beautiful,” says Maybe.
None of them could quite believe it when the project finally came to fruition. “It was a passion project by a few crazy people,” says Swen. “If we’d known what we were in for, we’d never have started.”
Like all true vernacular design, The Nest has grown from its context – from its inspiration, its materials, the skills that went into its creation. As a result, it belongs to the desert in a way no other dwelling could. It also has the transformative power Porky refers to in relation to his pod designs – it envelops and immerses visitors in a way that allows them to truly alter their perspectives.
The Nest is at one with the landscape in another way, too. It contributes to the conservation and rehabilitation of the land. Guests who stay here sustain Swen’s conservation programme. The Nest might have been a crazy idea, but it closes the loop in a remarkable emotional, ecological and economic ecosystem.