Maverick hotel designer Bill Bensley has embarked upon his most ambitious project yet – WorldWild, a zoological resort in China where animals roam and humans are ‘caged’. Sam Ballard reports
Bill Bensley, the “Willy Wonka of hotel design”, is planning on building a wildlife reserve in China that will take the idea of a zoo and turn it on its head.
WorldWild, which will take eight years to build, will allow endangered animals to roam free across 95 per cent of a 2,000-hectare site, while humans visitors will be restricted to 5 per cent. The area will be made up of three zones – Australia, Asia and Africa – with local species living in their own “natural habitat”.
Located in Wuchuan, in southern China’s Guangdong province, first phase of the project is expected to open in 2023.
The project received approval from China’s Communist Party leaders last year and will also become home to abused animals from China’s zoos. It’s an important step forward for the country’s environmental and ethical awareness, especially in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, which has been traced back to wet markets selling wild animals in Wuhan.
In interview with Globetrender, Bill Bensley says: “I met with the highest leader of the Communist party of South East Asia and his 45-person entourage in a giant ballroom and presented 800 metres of drawings of WorldWild.
WorldWild’s various zones will also be linked up by train, with four operating between the different “Savannahs”. There will be seven different stops on the route, each one with its own theatre, which will broadcast programmes aimed at ten- to 15-year olds.
Bensley says: “The government has approved all our plans and the most exciting thing is that we have a train that goes around and stops at different places in a very theatrical matter, where we will pound home that message that wildlife should not be an item on the dinner menu. If the buying stops then the killing will stop. We hope to influence maybe ten million Chinese people a year in this way.”
Each “continent” will be broken down further to include areas for grazing herds, a rhino and elephant park (with walking tours) and outdoor aviaries.
“Because the Chinese government is totally behind us, they will be helping us with moving animals from existing zoos. We are not making a circus here. At Guangzhou zoo they make tigers jump through hoops every hour. We will be providing a sanctuary.”
“That’s when you run into problems,” he says. “I have this zoologist on staff for me full time so we are working out where we can get these animals from and what will be the mix. We know that kangaroos can love happily with gazelles, for example.”
Earlier in the year he also published a “Sensible Sustainability Solutions” white paper where he documented how a hotel should be built with sustainability as part of its DNA. In the open source document he made 20 suggestions for how hotels should be built.
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