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May 23, 2011, 2:14:06 AM5/23/11

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Zoos: Hot New Design Typology?

To us, zoos stopped being fun and started being soul-crushing somewhere around the age of 7. But clearly, not everyone feels that way, considering the rash of recent high-profile zoo competitions weï؟½ve seen in the last few years.

One French team has, perhaps consciously, sealed their legacy as ï؟½those zoo architects,ï؟½ by winning three of those competitions in the last five years, most recently for the Primorskiy Zoological Park in Saint Petersburg. See what they seem to be doing right (SPOILER ALERT: a lot of faceted icebergs and Buckminster-esque biodomes) after the jump.

So why, despite our increasing ambivalence as a society towards traditional modes of entertainment, and (hopefully) increasing sensitivity towards animal suffering, are more zoos being constructed? One answer might be to say that everything ï؟½ everything ï؟½ can be tied back in a superficial way to the global recession. Zoos are typically born of economic downturns: 80% of Americans, at least, ï؟½believe that zoos and aquariums are good for their local economiesï؟½ (in fact, most American zoos have their roots in the Great Depression). Moreover, the winning team writes that ï؟½harshly criticized for a long time, zoological parks are today considered major stakeholders of biodiversty preservation.ï؟½

This particular project ï؟½ which bases its form on the notion of Pangea ï؟½ is the work of a team comprising Tanant and Jean Christophe Nani (of TN PLUS) and Aldric Beckmann and Franï؟½oise Nï؟½Thï؟½pï؟½ (of Beckmann Nï؟½Thï؟½pï؟½). Their last two competition wins were for the Vincennes, France zoo in ï؟½06, and the Helsinki Zoo project in ï؟½08.

The team writes:

ï؟½Thousands and thousands of years ago, the surface of the earth was but one and only supercontinent, known as the Pangea. Subject to tectonic forces, the Paleolithic Pangea over time broke into splinters, which slowly organised themselves in a configuration that, although always prone to movements, we still are familiar with. Ecosystems, once linked with each others, are today kept apart by oceans and seas. Species of the same origin have followed a distinct path on each separated continentï؟½ The project offers a symbolic sample of every continent in an attempt to recreate the illusion of a reunited Pangea within the very zoological park of Saint-Petersburg.ï؟½

The St. Petersburg zoo has been in the news recently, due to the three month-old jaguar cubs theyï؟½re taking care of. Enjoy.