I have just returned from a 5 day expedition through Borneo’s finest rainforest… What a trip! The landscape is truly magnificent, the terrain is rough, rugged – physically and psychologically demanding, but the places I have been have made all the blood, sweat and cursing all the worth while.

Previous posts describe the challenge of designing buildings for an untouched and fragile area of outstanding natural beauty. It is impossible to work in this environment without being aware of the threats to it’s exisitence, hence posts have often digressed into related subjects such as reforestation, ecosystem services and palm oil plantations. This post will come back to the topic of design.

As we were tucking into our dinner last night we were rudely interrupted by an extraordinarily loud crash. It scared the life out of Eda who immediately leapt into Jamil’s arms, thus confirming a point of gossip that Andy and I had been debating for some days. We continued munching our steamed fish for a few more moments before Andy voiced what I had been thinking.

In front of me the river is making it’s way over a small waterfall and behind me I can hear the girls carrying on in the kitchen as they prepare lunch. I am sitting next to a 1:50,000 scale relief model of the Maliau Basin Conservation area which is to be my home environment for the next three months.