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Architectural Digest
USA
September 1995

A Kenyan Sanctuary

Dodo and Michael Cunnigham-Reid's Tower On lake Naivasha
Text by Elizabeth Lambert. Photography by Jonathan  Pilkington 

At night hippos graze at the base of the tower, and from a balcony, their munching and chortling sound like old men laughing.  If there is a full moon, the Colobus monkeys are peaceful.  If there is a cheetah in the neighborhood, they take to raucous whooping< Giraffes, impalas and zebras are quieter visitors, but in the morning it is the cry of the fish eagle that reverberates along the shore of Lake Naivasha, Kenya. Donkeys graze on the shore of Lake Naivasha, Kenya on land that was part of the fabled Delamere estate in the 1930's.  The present owner, Michael Cunnigham-Reid whose mother was married to Tom, Lord Delamere, lived near the estate as a teenager.  "This is good farming land" says his wife Dodo Cunnigham-Reid" and we have cattle but we do not farm.  There are no machines, noise so the animals feel protected and are returning.

About five years ago the couple bought 500 acres as a game sanctuary and began construction of the tower as a weekend retreat.  "The most important person on the project was the engineer, Nick Evans – he's a genius," says Dodo Cunnigham-Reid, who conceived the Pagoda-like eight story structure.  Concrete was used for the first three floors, then a steel ribcage in Kenyan cypress.  "There is a lot of high tech in there, but you can't see it"

This is where Michael and Dodo Cunnigham-Reid are creating a sanctuary for animals and living among them in the tower they have built as a weekend house.  It is land that once belonged to his stepfather, Tom, Lord Delamere, as he knew it well as a young man, so it is "a source of great satisfaction to have been able to buy five hundred acres back to have a presence on Lake Naivasha again" he says. 

The tower grew from Dodo Cunnigham-Reid's determination to create "something artistic" in Africa, and she intends it as a symbol.  "The continent is dominated by war, poverty, despair" she says. "I had been lobbying against so many things and realized that I could not change matters, but I needed to do something, so I built a tower as a symbol of peace and hope.  Some people paint a picture or write a poem when they have a certain mood.  I built a tower."

"It began as a dream, but the form of it came into my head one morning a, so I scribbled it out and took that drawing to an architect who could base it in reality.  I suppose there are Nordic influences because I was born in Germany, but the design is not based on any academic study of architecture.  It is what was there when I drew it out.  What I do is emotional, not rational."

Her husband, Knowing just how difficult it is to build anything at Lake Naivasha, much less a complicated tower thought that she was crazy but knew she was determined, so he gave the go-ahead.

And so the tower was built.  Curious monkeys watched as it grew taller and joined their territory in the tops of the yellow fever trees.  Birds nested in the steel ribcage.  Construction took four years but she was not in a hurry.  Then there it was, looking from across the lake like a delicately carved wood toy.  "You are not aware of it's size until you are closer to it" she says.