Foster + Partners’ New Elephant House Opens at Copenhagen Zoo
The new Elephant House at the Copenhagen Zoo by Foster + Partners opened early June following an official ceremony attended by local royalty. This new Elephant House provides these big animals with a stimulating environment, together with easily accessible spaces for the public to enjoy them, and restores the visual relationship between the zoo and the city’s park.
Covered with lightweight, glazed domes to provide natural light, these enclosures are designed to bring a sense of light and openness to a building type traditionally characterised as closed. The spaces maintain a strong visual connection with the sky and changing patterns of daylight and the distinctive glazing simulates a canopy of trees. The elephant enclosures are set deep into the ground, ensuring excellent insulation on the outside walls and a natural connection with the landscape.The glazed domes also have opening windows to allow natural ventilation, and there is a heat recovery system which further enhances the environmental efficiency of the scheme.
The Elephant House is Foster + Partners’ first zoological building. Inserted into the natural contours of the site, it replaces a structure dating from 1914 and represents a new dimension in zoological design. It’s built with a warm terracotta-coloured concrete and the yellow beach-like sand that naturally existed on the site was recycled to create the paddocks. With mud holes, scattered pools of water and shading objects, the new Elephant House is a place where the animals can play and interact naturally. Broad public viewing terraces run around the ouside of the domes, while a ramped walkway leads down into an educational space, looking into the enclosures along the way.
more: www.fosterandpartners.com/Practice/; www.zoo.dk/